The Eva Series Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Wilde, J. M.

  Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke that last sentence.

  “Stay inside, and wait it out. With any hope, we’ll—”

  She was interrupted by a loud crash coming from somewhere off-screen. She screamed before disappearing behind her desk, hiding from whatever had just broken in. The picture turned sideways as the camera plummeted to the studio floor.

  A horde of zombies swarmed over the news desk, chaotic scuffles and screams blared, and then the screen turned to static.

  Wyatt stood up from his chair. “We gotta get out of here.”

  “She just said to stay inside!” Jo argued, her eyes wide with panic.

  “And look what happened to her,” I said. “That studio is only a few blocks away. That’ll be us soon if we don’t do something.”

  “I say we go to Melbourne Central plaza,” Ben said. “There’s a Bob’s Camping store there. We can grab some camping gear and more weapons. Then, we can go to my parents’ place. They live out of the city, it might be our safest option if we want to survive.”

  “Survive?” Jo asked, her voice trembling. “How can we survive in Melbourne Central? That place will be crawling with those things! Then you want to go to your parents’? We can’t be driving all over Melbourne!”

  Wyatt put a hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down. “He’s right, Jo. We’ll need more than just some homemade spears to survive. We need to find supplies, and that’s the best chance we’ve got.”

  Ben folded his arms over his chest and glared at Jo. “You don’t have to come to my parents’. But I’m going. I need to make sure they’re okay.”

  Jo’s eyes dropped to the floor in guilt.

  For the first time in my life, I felt grateful my parents weren’t alive. I couldn’t bear going through this knowing they were out there, in danger or infected. With my parents gone, Jo’s parents in Europe and Wyatt’s living in Cairns, Ben was the only one who could make it to see his.

  “Of course we’ll go with you, Ben,” I said as I stood up next to Ben. “We can find your parents after we leave Melbourne Central. We’ll definitely need to get supplies from there first.”

  Jo sighed, pushing her hair back out of her face. “And if we’re lucky enough to make it out of there alive and find Ben’s parents? Then what the hell are we gonna do?” She wasn’t calming down, and I could see tears welling in her eyes. “How are we going to get through this?” Ben’s expression softened when he saw a tear fall to her cheek, and he stepped towards her and held her, letting her cry on his shoulder.

  I could see Wyatt was thinking something over in his head, and he sighed as he finally came out with it. “We can go to my brother’s.”

  “What?” Jo asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  Wyatt had only mentioned his brother a few times before, but he never once had anything nice to say about him. From what he had told me, his brother was a conspiracy theorist who lived somewhere deep in the woods, trying to stay ‘off the grid.’

  Ben furrowed his brow. “You mean the brother who’s constantly rambling on about the next top-secret government mind control plan? Or predicting a zombie apoca—” Ben paused. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” Wyatt nodded once. “Looks like he’s not so crazy after all. Besides, he lives in the middle of nowhere on a huge block of land. He’s got a ton of canned food and supplies—enough to last at least a few months. He’s even got guns.”

  “Where does he live?” I asked.

  He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Just a bit further than Cairns,” he mumbled.

  Our jaws dropped. “Cairns?”

  Cairns was two states away, towards the very top of Australia. I didn’t know exactly how long it would take to drive there, but it would mean days out on the open road.

  “Yes,” he said, holding his palms up defensively. “But it’s okay. I know the way, it shouldn’t take more than forty hours if we take turns driving and don’t stop.”

  I started to feel light-headed again. First, we had to make it to Melbourne Central—the busiest shopping centre in the city—to get supplies. Then we had to drive out to the suburbs to find Ben’s parents. And if we were lucky enough to make it through that, we then had to drive across the country, which would be crawling with zombies. It seemed an impossible task. But we didn’t have any other options.

  “Wyatt’s right,” I decided. “We can either stay and wait for what happened at the TV station to happen here, or we can take our chances on the outside. If—no, when we make it Cairns, we’ll be safe.”

  “There’s only one problem,” Wyatt uttered, scratching his chin.

  “Just one?” Ben asked, his words laced with sarcasm.

  “What is it?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

  Wyatt leaned an arm against the wall. “Ben’s car is too small for all of us to fit, and Jo and Eva, you walked here today, right?”

  We both nodded.

  “Well,” he continued, “that only leaves my car. And it’s parked two blocks away. We’ll have to run for it.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath, knowing I had to stay calm. Freaking out would only make everything worse. After a moment to compose myself, I slid the door open a little to see three zombies walking past the diner windows.

  Jo scooted up behind me, peering over my shoulder, and groaned. “How are we going to get to it? We can’t just walk out the front door!”

  I reached for my satchel. “I have an idea.”

  Chapter Eight

  At first Wyatt was the only one open to my idea, but once Ben and Jo realised we had no other choice, they soon came around. Within half an hour, I had already transformed Jo and Ben into half-decent zombies.

  Using my bruise wheel—a small tub containing a four-colour wheel of concealer: red, grey, purple and brown—as well as some tomato sauce from the diner as blood, they looked undead enough to be able to blend in to the growing parade of zombies outside.

  Of course, we didn’t know if zombies were attracted to us by sight or smell. For good measure, Ben pulled on some rubber gloves and covered our work aprons in the blood and guts of the dead zombie in the freezer.

  This just might work, I thought as I put the finishing touches on my own zombie makeup. Wyatt walked into the office and slid the door closed behind him, leaving us alone again for the first time since this morning, which already seemed like so long ago after everything that had happened since.

  “Hey,” he said as he took a seat on the desk, “I’m ready to be undead.” My heart started racing as I dipped my makeup brush into the grey concealer and started dotting it all over his face. I had never been in such close proximity to him before, so close that I could almost hear his heartbeat, and I wondered if it was beating even faster than mine.

  “Do you think we’ll make it out of here?” I asked quietly, blending the concealer under his eyes.

  “We have to,” he said, looking up at me. “I know our plan is a bit sketchy, but it’s all we’ve got. And after seeing you kick that zombie’s ass before, I know you’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so.” I cringed at the thought of that creature, the sickening crunch of the knife going into his skull.

  “I know so,” he said. “I mean, you stabbed that thing right in the face, Eva. It was amazing. You’re amazing.” I pursed my lips, not knowing how to respond, and he rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans. “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I inhaled quickly, knowing it was now or never. “I’m sorry I ran out on you last night,” I said, avoiding eye contact as I dabbed my brush in the colour palette. “I was just ... scared.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I was too forward.”

  I shook my head. “You weren’t. You were very sweet. And I want you to know that I didn’t say no because I don’t feel the same way, I do—”

  “You do?” he asked, his eyes wide with hope.

  “Yes,” I said quickly, “b
ut I panicked.”

  His lips curved upwards slightly, like he was trying to stop himself from smiling, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never known you to panic about anything before.”

  I laughed a little. “I know. It took me by surprise too. I just started thinking about what could go wrong ... you know, if we started dating,” I cleared my throat awkwardly, “what happens if we break up? We’d never be able to just be friends again.”

  He nodded. “That was on my mind, too. But at least we’d know.”

  I exhaled, shaking my head. I felt stupid for worrying about our relationship status when the apocalypse was right outside the door, but I just couldn’t shake him out of my mind. And with the threat of death suddenly so real, I didn’t want to die knowing I missed my chance at love. My heart jumped in my chest as I finally decided to take the leap.

  “I came to work today with every intention of saying yes,” I said, a smile tugging at my lips, “to going on a date with you.”

  A wide smile spread across his cheeks. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Then all hell broke loose, and now we’re about to risk our lives to get outta here,” I let out a long sigh. “But I still wanted you to know how I feel, especially now that we might not make it through this.”

  He pulled me in for a hug. “We are going to make it through this.”

  I leaned back, touching up some of the makeup on his cheek with my thumb. His gaze caught mine, and the butterflies in my stomach had sparked into a frenzy, sending flutters of excitement dancing through my veins. As I looked into his eyes, I decided to do something I had wanted to do ever since I first met him.

  Slowly, I leaned towards him, and he responded by doing the same. With our lips finally about to touch, I felt my heart pounding harder than ever before.

  This is it, I thought. This is my moment.

  A loud crash echoed throughout the diner, making me jump back and bringing us tumbling down to reality. In a snap, Wyatt and I slammed the door open and ran out into the diner.

  Ben was standing with his hands covering his ears from the noise, and was surrounded by pieces of broken plates all around him on the floor.

  “What happened?” Wyatt asked, clearly flustered.

  “Sorry,” Ben said, wincing as porcelain crunched under his shoes. “I knocked some plates over. My bad.”

  “Uh, guys?” Jo called from the other side of the counter, looking out the window. We all turned to face the windows of the diner to see more than a dozen zombies stumbling up to the glass.

  Jo started backing up, side-stepping her way around the counter. “I think they know we’re here now.”

  “Time to leave,” Wyatt said as he ran back into the office to grab our weapons.

  “How are we going to get past them now?” I asked, running in behind him to grab my satchel.

  “We won’t,” Ben said, “not with so many of them out there waiting for us. We’ll have to hide out in the basement.”

  My stomach turned as we ran into the hallway, headed for the stairwell. I doubted we would last more than a few days holed up in the underground. Reluctantly, I followed the others into the stairwell and started running down the stairs.

  “Wait,” I whispered, and they all stopped on the stairs and looked back at me. “We can’t do this. We’ll die down there. We have to get to the car.”

  Jo stepped back up the stairs towards me, her eyes wide with fear. “They’re waiting for us out there. We don’t have any other choice.”

  “Yes we do,” I replied, pulling her towards the trolleys.

  I knew we only had two choices ...

  Leave.

  Or die.

  Chapter Nine

  Wyatt slowly creaked the door of the stairwell open, peering back inside the diner. Through the gap, I could see dozens of zombies crowded around the outside of the diner, growling as they pressed up against the windows.

  I held my breath as Wyatt quickly snuck through the door and behind the counter, running low and fast so the infected wouldn’t see him. I watched as he stayed down, making his way over to the other side of the diner, pressing his back up against the counter to stay out of sight.

  For a moment, I thought about praying for him, for us, to make it out of here unscathed. I stopped believing in God the moment I found out my parents had been killed. When the policewoman with those melancholy eyes sat me down and told me the driver of the taxi they were in fell asleep at the wheel and veered directly into the path of a semi-trailer. In an instant, they were gone, and my faith died along with them.

  But, as I watched those mindless zombies sniffing and clawing at the glass, their eerie eyes searching for signs of life, and saw Wyatt coming dangerously close to them, I wished more than ever that some omnipotent being was watching over us, keeping us alive.

  Slowly, Wyatt reached his hand up towards the cash register, crinkling his nose as he pushed the eject button, causing the cash draw to ‘ding’ as it popped open.

  Peering around the corner of the counter, he breathed a sigh of relief to see the zombies hadn’t heard it over their moaning, and he reached into the cash drawer, picking up a coin. He hurriedly crawled back towards the other end of the counter, close to the hallway where Ben, Jo and myself were watching him, waiting. Rising up over the counter, he slid the coin into one of the jukeboxes and started casually flipping through the song choices.

  “Wyatt!” Jo whispered impatiently. “Just pick one! It doesn’t matter!”

  “It does matter!” he whispered back, searching the song list. “We’re about to do something completely insane and extremely dangerous—we need a power song!”

  Jo sighed, exasperated, but I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

  Finally, after a few clicks of the song list, his eyes landed on the perfect one. “Oh yeah,” he grinned. “That’s the one.”

  Wyatt pushed the button and rolled back into the hallway, just as Rock Around The Clock started blaring throughout the diner and out the speakers at the front door.

  “That should distract ‘em long enough,” he said as he locked the door.

  It was time.

  Wyatt and Ben held the trolleys still while Jo and I climbed in, already loaded with our bags and the weapons we gathered from around the diner.

  “Ready?” Ben asked as he and Wyatt positioned the trolleys up against the double doors in the stairwell. Hearing a loud smash from inside the diner, I knew the zombies had made their way inside.

  “Let’s do this,” I answered, holding my spear in position. They pushed the trolleys forward, slamming us through the doors and out onto the street.

  Even though the majority of zombies had been lured towards the front of the building by the music blaring through the outside speakers, at least ten still stood between us and Wyatt’s car, parked two blocks away.

  They gave the trolleys one last push before Ben climbed in behind Jo and Wyatt jumped in with me, making the cart wobble as he lowered himself in. Jo ignited the fire extinguisher to help cloud us from the zombies and I began slashing at any who got too close.

  I could feel my heart pounding and my arms shaking as we sped down the street, hacking at zombie after zombie as we zoomed past.

  “We’re nearly there!” Wyatt yelled as he fought off one of the zombies that had latched on to the trolley, gutting it like a fish with a butcher knife. I could see his yellow Chevy parked by the sidewalk on the next block, and I knew we would be there in a matter of seconds considering how fast we were flying down the street.

  “How do we stop?” Jo cried as the fire extinguisher started to sputter.

  Before anyone could answer, the trolleys hit the curb and toppled over, sending us all flying onto the hard concrete.

  I winced in pain as I skidded across the ground, grazing my arms and knees on the sidewalk and coming to a stop against the brick wall of a building. Opening my eyes, I could see a giant horde of zombies run
ning down the hill, falling over each other to get to us as we lay on the ground helplessly.

  “They’re coming!” I yelled as I picked myself up and held my hand out for Wyatt. I helped him to his feet while Jo and Ben quickly snatched up a few of the knives strewn along the ground from the fall. Feeling a sharp pain soaring down my arm, I started running fiercely towards the car, too afraid to look at what was causing it.

  Wyatt made it to the car first, fumbling around with his keys and frantically sliding one into the door. He swung it open, throwing a knife, the hairspray and lighter into the backseat. I jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut behind me as Ben slid into the back, dumping three knives and a spear next to him.

  “Where’s Jo?” I asked. Turning around, I saw Jo was still running towards the car, clutching her spear tightly, with six zombies right behind her. “She’s not gonna make it!” I said as I reached into the back seat, grabbed the hairspray and lighter, and jumped back out of the car.

  “Eva! What are you doing?” I heard Wyatt call after me as I ran, but I didn’t stop. I had to help Jo.

  “Just start the car!” I yelled back.

  One of the zombies jumped at Jo, falling short and clutching her ankle, tripping her up and causing her to fall to the ground. She held her spear high and started stabbing it repeatedly until it let go of her ankle. She scrambled to her feet as I ran up next to her, flicking the lighter as I held it in front of the hairspray can. I had no idea what I was doing, but I hoped it would work. Just as the other five zombies were about to close in, I pressed down on the hairspray can, sending a huge flame bursting into the air in front of me.

  I felt my fingers starting to burn as I sprayed the flames on the zombies, but it was no use. I watched in horror as they continued running towards us, now as ferocious fireballs. Jo stood behind me, pulling on my shirt, urging me to run. “Come on, Eva! We can make it!”