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

by Artinian, Christopher

  Isabel was knelt down on a small mat, carefully digging out weeds when she heard the dogs start barking in the kitchen. As usual, she had left the door open and the dogs knew they could come around and join her if they so wished, but usually they enjoyed the comfort of their beds to the damp grass. She waited a few seconds to see if it stopped, but it did not. They were working dogs, and old now. It was only since Kayleigh had come back from university that they had been allowed in the house; before that, they had spent their lives living in the barn. Most of the time they were well behaved, but occasionally there were times when Isabel and Thomas regretted their decision to bring them into the house.

  “Goodness, what a racket,” she said as she battled stiffness to climb to her feet. She placed the small trowel down on the mat and walked around the house and into the yard. The dogs were still inside barking, the door was still wide open, and there was no sign of anything out of place. Isabel marched into the kitchen, irritated that her peace had been broken. “What on earth is—” in that instant, Isabel saw an inhuman figure at the far end of the hall. It had its back to her, and its head flicked from side to side as it looked in the bedrooms, hunting for prey.

  Isabel could not move. Fear took a tight hold of every muscle in her body, and as much as she wanted to turn and run, she remained rooted to the spot. The creature turned, and although she could not see its eyes in the darkness of the hall, she could feel them on her. Suddenly it was sprinting towards her, and the spell was broken. Isabel turned and ran out of the house with the dogs following closely behind. She was no more than a few metres from the door when the beast pounced, flying through the air towards her. Its weight knocked her from her feet and before she hit the ground, she let out a shriek of pain as it sank its teeth into her neck. The dogs stopped barking and instead began to howl, making the farmyard tremble with terrifying echoes. Then…there was silence.

  The two dogs watched as their mistress’s attacker jumped to its feet, seemingly unaware that the canines existed. It turned and headed out of the farmyard in search of fresh conquests. Isabel lay still on the floor, and both dogs angled their heads then slowly began to back away. Isabel jerked; her limbs began to move again, but the movements were not human. The dogs did not bark or howl as she got to her feet. They looked. They looked into her eyes; that’s when they knew their mistress was gone. The risen creature let out a gurgling growl from the back of its throat, and the dogs turned and ran.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Wren and Robyn went to sit together at the far end of the locker room in one corner. They had been in the room an hour and the constant thudding against the door showed no signs of abating. “So, it doesn’t look like they’re going to get bored any time soon. What’s the plan? Other than slowly dying of thirst in here,” Robyn said.

  “Don’t be stupid. We won’t die of thirst. Brendan will have turned and killed us all long before that happens,” Wren replied, softly.

  “Nice. Thanks. That makes me feel much better.”

  The two sisters looked across to the other pair of siblings. Kayleigh had her eyes closed and her head resting on her brother’s shoulder. Brendan had gone very pale. He just sat there, one arm around his sister, staring at the wall ahead of him. Wren watched him intently, to make sure he was still breathing. She glared at his chest, and for the time being, he was still taking shallow breaths, but that would not last long. “He’s not our only problem, though,” Wren said eventually. “We can’t get out of the windows, so our only way out is through that door, and those things aren’t going anywhere.”

  “You figured all that out by yourself? Wow, no wonder you were always the teacher’s pet,” Robyn said.

  “Funny arse aren’t you? But listen, I think I’ve got an idea. I think I know how we can get out of here.”

  “I’m all ears,” Robyn replied.

  “We gouge a hole out of the door, big enough for us to get a javelin through, then we pick them off one at a time.”

  “Have you seen the thickness of that door? It would take days. It’s solid wood,” snapped Robyn.

  “It wouldn’t take days,” Wren said climbing to her feet and pulling out her Swiss Army knife.

  “You’re going to do it with that? I stand corrected. It will take weeks.”

  “Trust me, this’ll work,” Wren said, casting another glance towards Brendan, picking up her javelin and walking to the door. The bangs and thuds against the thick wood were continuous, but while ever the door was wedged in place, they remained safe from the creatures outside. Wren took out the pen knife and looked at the many tool attachments, eventually choosing the standard knife blade. She put her hand up against the door and felt the vibrations through it. On the other side were an unknown number of creatures that wanted to tear her to pieces. She swallowed hard as she dug the blade into the wood, making only the slightest of holes, but it was all that she needed.

  She drew the knife back out again before plunging it into the wood once more, mere millimetres to the right of the first cut. She was making the incisions just slightly above her own head height, as the creatures she had seen running towards them before diving into the locker room had been adults. She stabbed the wood again, just to the right of the last hole, and then began to lever the blade a little, making the wood splinter. The more it splintered, the more she twisted the sharp metal, gradually making the hole that little bit bigger.

  After fifteen minutes, Wren had managed to dig a crater in the wood about the size of a Starburst sweet. It was hard going. She had already worked up a sweat, and she could feel blisters developing on the palm of her hand as she pushed, forced, and twisted the knife through the hard wood. She was just about to make another incision when she was sure she heard her name being called. She had become deaf to everything but the sound of growls and the constant thudding, but as she heard it a second time, she stopped and turned around.

  Robyn was stood with her javelin pointed towards Brendan. Kayleigh still had her head on her brother’s shoulder, her eyes were closed, but Wren could not conceive how she could be sleeping with the constant barrage of terrifying sounds filling the locker room.

  “He’s gone,” Robyn said, and Wren did not require any further explanation to understand what she meant. Brendan’s skin was pallid, his head had dropped forward, and any second he would become one of those creatures.

  Wren leapfrogged the barricade, and grabbed Kayleigh’s right arm, nearly pulling it out of its socket as she slid her across the tiled floor. “Aaarrrggghhh!” Kayleigh screamed, partly from shock, partly from pain as Wren’s fast and violent action jerked her from whatever daze she had been in. “What the hell do you—”

  “Quiet!” Wren hissed, letting go of Kayleigh’s arm. She climbed back over the barricade, collected her javelin, and went to stand by the side of her sister. Kayleigh stood and was about to go back across to her brother when his head jolted up and his eyes sprang open.

  “Bren…?” Brendan’s head shot around to look at Kayleigh. His eyes were no longer the warm blue they once had been. They were grey, grey like his face; grey like his lips; grey like the clouds that were gathering over the rest of Kayleigh’s short future. With animal agility, the creature sprang to its feet and began to run towards Kayleigh, taking Wren and Robyn by surprise. They did not have enough time to react and it was out of their striking distance in a heartbeat. Kayleigh finally came to her senses and scrambled over the barricade, narrowly missing the beast’s outstretched arms as she fell onto the hard floor on the other side. It lunged and the upper half of its body made it onto the locker. Its arms continued to reach for Kayleigh and the writhing motion and its own momentum helped it to gain ground. As she desperately tried to shuffle away from the thing that had been her brother, the tips of its fingers moved closer, eventually grabbing the bottom of her jeans.

  She continued to scoot, but the beast was like a fish caught on a line and the more she heaved, the more it slid over the top of the locker. Its mouth chomped up
and down and droplets of saliva splashed on the tiles beside her. Kayleigh let out a high-pitched scream that bounced off the walls of the tiled locker room even managing to drown out the sound of the banging. She stopped struggling, realising the more she moved away, the closer the creature came to getting her, but now it was too late. The tipping point had been reached, and the beast propelled itself over the edge of the barricade. Kayleigh let out another loud scream as she flipped onto her side and covered her eyes, resigning herself to her fate.

  There was another loud thud as the creature flopped down onto the floor. Kayleigh felt a hand dig into her thigh and was waiting for the sensation of teeth tearing through the denim and into her flesh, but it never came. She lay on her side for a few more seconds before taking her hands away from her face, opening her eyes and turning. Her breath heaving, she looked at the hand on the side of her thigh. The fingers of the creature were still clutching it tight. Her eyes followed beyond the arm to the face, where a thick shaft protruded from its eye. She followed up the length of the javelin to see Wren holding it firm. The fifteen-year-old yanked it back out and the beast’s head fell to the floor with a loud thud.

  Kayleigh pulled the creature’s cold hand from her thigh and shuffled back. Wren extended her hand and Kayleigh took it, rising to her feet. She did not say thank you, she did not even acknowledge Wren with a look, but instead went to sit in one corner of the room, pulling her knees up to her chest.

  “Don’t mention it,” Wren whispered under her breath as she dragged the corpse out of the way. She leant her javelin up against the wall, took out her knife once again, and started expanding the hole she had begun, one chip at a time.

  “So how long do you think this will take?” Robyn asked.

  “I have no idea. Believe it or not, this is a first for me.”

  “Yeah, but in that nerdy brain of yours you must have figured an estimate and stuff.”

  The more Wren chipped away, the more she weakened the integrity of the surrounding wood, and she had already made more progress than she had expected. “I dunno, another couple of hours, maybe,” she said, retracting the knife blade and pulling out the saw blade to work the hole wider.

  “And do you really think this is going to work?”

  Wren stopped and looked at her sister. “It’s all we’ve got. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. It will be a little like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Erm, okay, but in this scenario, aren’t we the fish?”

  “Meh. Whatever.”

  “Let me know if you need a break, I can take over.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  Robyn went across to Kayleigh and sat down near her. “I’m sorry about your family. We do know what you’re going through. It happened to us.”

  “He was always such a sweet boy was Brendan. Didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” Kayleigh whispered.

  “That thing...in the end, that thing wasn’t your brother anymore. I don’t know what this disease, virus, infection…I don’t know…whatever it is, when it takes someone, they stop being that person. It wasn’t your Uncle John. It wasn’t your dad, it wasn’t Brendan. Just like it wasn’t our mum and it wasn’t our dad. This thing is...it turns people. It takes their bodies and it turns them into something else, something…rabid. It turns them into monsters.”

  Kayleigh looked towards Robyn. “I understand that, but that doesn’t change the fact I’ve lost them, and they’re never coming back, and they died in the most horrible way. It doesn’t change the fact that I have to go back to my mum and tell her that her husband, my dad, is dead. It doesn’t change the fact that I have to go back to my mum and tell her that her son, my little brother, is dead. They got sick and we killed them. That’s the fact, and now everyone we knew, everyone we loved, is dead. And they suffered; and they’re never coming back, and we’re in this world alone now. We’re in this world alone, until we’re not anymore.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Well, look around you. This sickness, it gets everyone, and they only come after the living. They only have one purpose, and you’d have to be an idiot to think that you can escape it. So, you and I are sat here, breathing and having this conversation right now, but in a day’s time, in a week’s time, we’ll be joining them. We’ll just be another monster on the hunt.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “Of course I believe that. I thought it before, and now, seeing it first hand, I think it more than ever.”

  “What’s the point then? What’s the point in going on?”

  “Finally, the penny drops. You told me your sister was the smart one. That’s my point exactly. There is no point.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  Kayleigh nodded her head towards the door. “Well, a lot of that depends on your little sister doesn’t it?”

  “Wren thinks her plan will work, and she’s never let me down. If she thinks it will, then it will.”

  “Well that’s just dandy. We’ll all head on back home, and I’ll live out my last few days getting as wrecked as I can.”

  “That’s a great plan. Your mum will be grateful for all that support.”

  “Don’t you dare judge me. Because you live in LaLa Land, it doesn’t mean the rest of us do.” Robyn puffed and shook her head dismissively. “Okay then D-girl, what are you going to do if we get out of here?”

  “What do you mean, D girl?”

  This time it was Kayleigh who puffed dismissively. “I mean, Wren is obviously bright. I’m guessing she’s an A student. You...not so much.”

  “You’re right. I’m not proud of it, but yeah. I am a D student. I didn’t study. I wasn’t really interested in school. But y’know what, I’m not a coward. I’m not prepared to lie down and let shit happen. I’m taking control. I’m teaching myself how to live in this new world. And y’know what? I might not have been a great student at school, but out here, I’m learning really fast. And that’s how I know me and Wren are going to be just fine. But you—” Robyn broke off.

  “Me what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, c’mon. Tell me what you were going to say.”

  “You’ll end up just like your father and your brother.”

  chapter 6

  Robyn and Kayleigh did not talk again after that. Robyn shuffled further down the wall, and occasionally looked up to check Wren’s progress, but the rest of the time she thought about the events of the day. Wren carried on gouging, digging, and splitting the wood. The hole she had created was around the size of a coaster. She still had not broken through to the other side, but she could see the progress she was making, and it strengthened her resolve.

  Then the pivotal moment came. At first it was the thinnest of holes, then Wren twisted the knife, and the opening became the size of the nail on her little finger. She withdrew the blade quickly, and just looked for a second. She could see movement and shadows through the small gap. Suddenly, she jumped back as she saw a flaring pupil stare back at her, like a peephole in some creepy horror film. The growls and the banging became louder still, but Wren swallowed her fear and continued tunneling through the wood. Another hole appeared, and then another. Grey fingers immediately attempted to squeeze through the small gaps. She made another hole, this one a little bigger. Each one made the integrity of the surrounding wood weaker, until it splintered and became one single hole. A beast tried to plunge its hand through, but it struggled to fit in more than three of its thick grey fingers.

  Wren’s stomach churned a little. Her mind had been occupied with the task at hand. Despite the creatures’ growls and the eternal banging on the door, she had not thought about them. She had only focussed on breaking through to the other side. Now, reality came flooding through the small gap once again.

  She stepped back a little further and turned to look at her sister. “I’m through,” she said.

  In no time, Robyn was stood by her side with a similar look o
f revulsion adorning her face as the same fat, grey fingers tenaciously tried to penetrate the safe confines of the locker room. “Eugh. What now?”

  “Now we kill every last one of them and get out of here.” Wren picked up her javelin, and climbed up onto the bench. She forced the metal spear through the hole. The fingers retreated, and straight away, she could see one of the creature’s heads through the gap. She brought the javelin back and thrust again, just grazing the side of the beast’s head. She angled her weapon slightly to the right, and stabbed once more. This time, the sharp metal penetrated the eye. She felt the weight of the creature suddenly transfer to the end of the javelin and whipped it back out, allowing the beast to flop to the ground.

  Another monstrous face peered through the hole and she dispatched it in the same manner. It was replaced by another, then another. After she’d killed six of the flesh craved ghouls, she had a rest, and Robyn took over. She had more energy and even more venom. She relished the feeling of the sharp weapon as she put beast after beast to their final rest. Sometimes she angled up, sometimes down, depending on the height of the creature, but now there was just one monster left, and no matter how she tried to manoeuvre the javelin, she could not reach its head. She turned back to look at her sister, beckoning her across with a nod.

  Wren looked through the hole and instantly understood the problem. She had drilled the opening just above her head height, but as she saw the creature now, the hole came to just barely above its chest. It continued to hammer at the door. Both sisters knew they could stick the javelin through it as much as they wanted, but it would not be killed until that spike went through its head.

  They stepped away. “We’ve only got one option,” Wren whispered.