by Perrin Briar
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Details can be found at the end of FLOWERS VS. ZOMBIES.
FLOWERS VS. ZOMBIES
Vagrant
Perrin Briar
Chapter One
“I CAN’T wait to get back to civilisation,” Liz said. “Get a nice cup of coffee, go shopping, eat some spaghetti, go trekking on the weekends, meet friends and have parties. No wild animals. Except the ones we keep as pets.”
Adults, teenagers and children came out two by two from the thick jungle foliage. They were worn and tired, their eyes ensnared by grey. Their boots slid a little with each step until they got to the peak, where a strong wind beat at the tops of their heads, throwing their hair into further disarray.
“Doesn’t look like you’ll be shopping at Louis Vuitton any time soon,” Bill said with a smile.
The jungle lay spread out before them, the foliage dancing like the sea, a single living organism. The writhing azure embraced the green on every side like a warm blanket.
“What’s that?” Liz said, shading her eyes with one hand and pointing off into the distance with the other.
A dark shape protruded out of the water off the east coast.
“Looks like a boat,” Bill said.
“A boat?” Liz said. “Looks pretty small to be a boat.”
“It’s not the whole boat,” Bill said. “Just the stern. It must have run aground.”
“We’ll have to explore it sometime,” Liz said. “There might be supplies on board.”
“I wonder who that’s going to end up being,” Bill grumbled.
“What was that?” Liz said.
“Nothing,” Bill said. “It’s going to be dark soon. I don’t know about you, but I don’t much relish the idea of being stuck out here when night comes.”
“What’ll we do?” Liz said.
“We need to find somewhere safe to lay our heads,” Bill said.
“Any ideas?” Liz said.
Chapter Two
“WATCH YOUR heads,” Bill said. “It’s a little low here.”
The cave walls were craggy, rough, and full of holes. They had to place their feet carefully or risk falling flat on their faces.
“It’s like our first apartment,” Bill said. “Careful where you place your feet.”
“Are you sure the water can’t get in here?” Liz said, casting furtive glances back at the cave’s entrance, where the sea doused them with light spray.
“The entrance is too high for the water to enter,” Bill said.
“Are you sure?” Liz said.
“Fairly certain,” Bill said, heading deeper into the cave.
“That fills me with confidence,” Liz said.
Here, the dying daylight barely penetrated. Bill took out the handheld torch from the emergency life raft and cast it around the inside of the cave, the harsh light kicking up large intimidating shadows like they were inside the mouth of a giant monster.
The ground levelled out. They could sit down and stretch their legs. Any uncalculated movement resulted in a skinned elbow or a torn hole in their clothes on the sharp craggy rocks.
“It’s like sleeping in the Haunted House at the fair,” Fritz said.
“But without the comfort of knowing it’s not real,” Ernest said.
“How are we going to sleep in here?” Liz said. “We can’t even lie down!”
“We’ll have to sleep sitting up,” Bill said. “I don’t know about you, but with the way I’m feeling I could sleep anywhere.”
“Me too,” Liz said. “As long as we’re safe for the night, I’m happy.”
They unshouldered their backpacks and arranged them on the ground to act as pillows. They relieved their bags of all food items. Liz sorted amongst the provisions and shared them out.
“Thank you, Dennis,” Bill said to the roof of the cave while chewing on a piece of Kendal Mint Cake.
After Jack had finished his pack of dried mangoes he reached for another.
“No more,” Liz said. “We need to preserve them for tomorrow. We might struggle to find food for the first few days.”
Francis lay flat out with his head in Liz’s lap. He at least appeared comfortable. Fritz and Ernest lay on their backs with their knees up, facing the ceiling. Within moments light snoring escaped their lips.
“We need to know what’s happening on the outside world,” Liz said in a hushed voice. “It might all be cleared up by now.”
“It won’t be over yet,” Bill said.
“How can you be sure?” Liz said.
“You didn’t hear the transmission on the radio,” Bill said. “It didn’t sound like the kind of thing that would get cleared up any time soon.”
“Tell me what it said,” Liz said.
Bill shifted position, dislodging a sharp rock stabbing him in the middle of his back.
“The virus had spread up and down the entire east and west coast of America,” he said. “There were reports of fighting on the streets of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The last thing we heard was New York was taken. If that’s true…”
He let the meaning hang.
“Then how will we know when we can return home?” Liz said.
“We’ll have to see,” Bill said.
“Do you think they’ll send a rescue ship?” Liz said.
“Almost certainly not,” Bill said.
“Our friends and family back home…” Liz said.
“They’ll take care of themselves,” Bill said. “As must we. We will see them again, one day.”
“When?” Liz said.
“I wish I knew,” Bill said.
Liz cast an eye over the lumpy sleeping forms.
“We have to protect them,” she said. “What do we do?”
“We have to build a shelter,” Bill said. “We can’t live in this cave forever.”
Bill yawned and stretched his limbs, scraping his knuckles on the wall in the process.
“We’d best get some shuteye,” he said. “Tomorrow is going to be a hard day.”
“It can’t be any harder than the one we just had,” Liz said.
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Bill said.
Sleep came easy snuggled up in a warm blanket of darkness. The sea washed against the cave’s mouth and filtered through the rocks on its way out again.
Bill started awake. He rubbed a hand over his face. Something had brushed against his cheek; half slap, half caressing blow. His eyes opened, glimpsing the velvet crack of the cave entrance. Liz and the boys were unmoving sleeping forms. He must have imagined it.
Bill turned to one side, a rock jabbing him in the side. He repositioned himself and found a comfortable spot.
He fell silent again, his breaths low, deep and drawn-out. Sleep seduced him once again, and as he felt himself begin to teeter over the edge and into the precipice of oblivion, he felt another slap against his cheek, followed by a high-pitched squeak.
Bill grunted and opened one eye. It drooped closed.
Squeak.
Both eyes opened now. By the light outside Bill guessed the time to be an hour before dawn. Something slapped against the back of his head. He felt at where he’d been struck. He turned to look at the darkness of the cave. There was nothing there. But he heard flapping, like a child clapping her tiny hands. It disappeared toward the mouth of the cave.
Then something struck him in the face. He caught sight of its huge bulbous eyes before it blacked out the world. Bill’s hands threw the creature off. It collided with the wall and hit the ground. I
t got up, flapped its winds and flew toward the exit.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
From somewhere deep in the darkness, accompanied by children’s clapping, dozens, maybe hundreds, of squeaking voices echoed up.
“Bats!” Bill shouted, his voice reverberating off the unseen cave walls. “Bats!”
The Flowers started up. Bill turned on his torch, finding each of their sleep-filled faces.
“Everyone up!” Bill said. “Out! Quick!”
“Wha-?” Ernest said.
The first bat hit Ernest on the chest. It looked up at him. He looked down at it. They both screamed. Ernest swept it off, turned, and ran for the exit. The others were up on their feet in an instant, backpacks clutched in her shaking hands.
Bill tripped and fell, tearing a hole in the knees of his trousers. They scrabbled in the pitch darkness, rushing toward the moon. The cloud of flapping wings burst from the cave like a leather river, spiralling into the darkness outside, up toward the moon as if trying to reach it.
The Flowers lay on their fronts, panting as the final few stragglers zipped out of the cave.
“They’ll be gone for a few hours now,” Bill said.
“If you think I’m going back in there you’ve got another thing coming!” Liz said, rubbing her hands over herself to dispel the imaginary tiny claws crawling over her body.
“Then what do you suggest we do now?” Bill said.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “I don’t care. But I’m not going back in there.”
“The sun won’t be rising for another few hours,” Bill said. “And the jungle isn’t the safest place to be at night.”
“Then we’ll stay on the beach until the sun does come up,” Liz said, a pinch of hysteria entering her voice.
Bill took Liz in his arms.
“Sh, sh, sh,” he said. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I can’t believe we’re here,” Liz said, on the verge of tears. “Why did this have to happen to us? Why now?”
Bill ran his fingers through Liz’s hair.
“We’re lucky,” he said. “We could have become one of those things.”
“I know,” Liz said, sniffing. “I just… Twenty-four hours ago we were at home in Chucerne. The world made sense. And now…”
“Things will get better,” Bill said. “You’ll see. We’ll go to the beach. No bats there. You can all sleep while I keep watch.”
“We’re never going to survive here,” Ernest said. “The first wave of settlers never do well.”
“We’re just going to have to do our best,” Bill said with a reassuring smile. “We’ll colonise this island. It’ll become New Switzerland.”
Liz’s lips cracked a smile at that.
“New Switzerland,” she said.
“We have a place to call home,” Bill said. “It’ll take time, but what else do we have?”
The boys scooped up a mound of sand each into a serviceable pillow and stretched out in long rows. Sleep found them quickly.
Bill sat with Liz between his legs, looking out at the ocean. There was a chill in the air as the sun began to rise. Bill wrapped his arms tighter around Liz.
“This is all I need, right here,” Bill said. “You and the boys. Healthy and well. Everything else is a bonus.”
“A roof would be nice,” Liz said. “And a bath.”
“And we’ll have them,” Bill said. “But right now we have each other. For now that’s enough.”
Liz looked out at the glowing orange ball on the horizon.
“It’s the first dawn of a new world,” Liz said. “What do you think everyone else is doing right now?”
“Exactly what we are,” Bill said. “Recovering. Surviving. Today marks the beginning of a new era, the era when man is no longer the top of the food chain. What people do today will determine what they’ll do every day from now on. Run, fight, or hide.”
Bill leaned his head against Liz’s shoulder and thought about all the things yet to do on the island. His body groaned at the challenge. But for now, this moment at least, he could relax. His breaths came slow and deep and his body pressed into Liz.
He heard a shuffling sound. He was slow to react, his movements tempered by malaise. He looked over his shoulder. The cloying fetid stench of a rotting corpse filled his senses as a zombie fell upon him. Bill’s face contorted into a mask of horror, and the broken yellow teeth set in a snapped jaw angled toward him.
Chapter Three
BILL STARTED awake, gasping, “Ah!”
Liz was bent over him, having woken him. Bill got to his feet, ignoring the twinge in his ankle.
“Where are the boys?” Bill said.
“They’re getting breakfast,” Liz said.
He looked beyond Liz to the edge of the jungle, where the boys were throwing rocks at coconuts. Fritz’s rock struck home and the coconut fell to earth. Bill released the breath he’d been holding.
“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?” he said.
“You needed rest,” Liz said.
“Not when we have so much to do,” Bill said.
Bill approached the boys, who were now smashing the coconuts open with sharp rocks. Fritz succeeded first, prying the coconut open with the sharp edge of a stone. He tilted his head back and drank the juice. Then he handed it to the others. After it was gone, Bill took the coconut and snapped it into pieces, handing one to each of them.
“What are we going to do today?” Fritz said around a mouthful of coconut.
“I thought we’d go shopping, catch a movie at the cinema,” Bill said. “What do you think?”
“Sounds good to me,” Fritz said.
“Today we’re going to find where our home is going to be,” Bill said. “Then we’re going to start building it.”
“Already?” Ernest said. “I thought we could take a rest for a while.”
“We’re not on holiday, though it might feel like it,” Bill said, peering around at their surroundings. “We don’t want to get caught with no shelter during the monsoon season.”
“Monsoon season?” Jack said.
“It means heavy rain,” Ernest said.
“I know what it means!” Jack said.
“All the countries in this area have them,” Bill said. “At least then we won’t have a water shortage problem.”
“No,” Fritz said. “But we might have a drowning problem.”
“There might be other people here,” Liz said. “Natives. They’d know how to survive. They could help us.”
“Sure, or eat us,” Bill said.
“Thanks for the confidence boost,” Liz said drily.
“We shouldn’t rely on there being natives,” Bill said. “If there’s evidence of them we’ll seek them out. Otherwise, let’s focus on surviving. After shelter we need ready sources of food and water. We’ll check out the sunken ship we saw before. It might have supplies we can use.”
Francis reached into Liz’s backpack and extracted his computer game.
“When did you pack that?” Fritz said. “Nice to know you’ve got your priorities straight.”
“While we were packing for our lives Francis was packing for his leisure time!” Ernest said.
“Give me that,” Bill said to Francis.
He did. Bill took out the batteries.
“Hey!” Francis said, making a grab for the batteries.
“We’ll need these for the torch,” Bill said. “We all need to pull together, pool our resources. It’s the only way we’ll survive.”
Francis’s bottom lip trembled.
“He can have a little go on it,” Liz said.
“No,” Bill said. “This is the way things are now. Finite resources. We have to make everything count.”
He tucked the batteries in his pocket.
“How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?” Fritz said.
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “But this doesn’t look like it’s part of a major trade crossroads to me. And given the
state of the world at the moment I doubt there’ll be much trading to speak of for a while.”
“So, we’re stuck here?” Fritz said. “Forever?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Or at least until we learn the virus is gone. But cheer up. It could be worse.”
“How could it be worse?” Fritz said. “We’re hundreds of miles from anywhere! And no one knows we’re here!”
A thick silence settled over them.
“Where do you think we are?” Ernest said to his father.
“On a random island out in the Pacific somewhere,” Bill said.
He took out a map and drew a circle around a wide blue area with his fingertip.
“So far as I can tell we’re somewhere in this area,” he said.
Liz peered at the map.
“Miles from civilisation,” she said.
“Yes,” Bill said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be civilised. I’m not going to lie to you. The next few weeks are going to be tough. But if we persevere there’s no reason we can’t build a new home for ourselves. Believe me, we’re a lot safer here than anywhere else.”
The others didn’t look convinced.
“I’ll make a deal with you all right now,” Bill said. “So long as there continues to be evidence of the end of the world we stay here. But if at any time we see signs of normal life going on we’ll strike out for the mainland. Agreed?”
Bill held out his hand. Liz and Ernest put their hands on first, followed by Francis and Jack. Fritz hesitated.
“Fritz,” Liz said. “We need you.”
“Liz, don’t,” Bill said. “We all have to make this decision for ourselves.”
Fritz considered the pile of hands. He put his hand on top.
“Until there’s evidence,” Fritz said with a nod.
Bill got to his feet.
“We’d best get moving,” he said. “Our home isn’t going to find itself.”
They picked up their bags and approached the jungle’s edge.
“Last night doesn’t seem real, does it?” Liz said. “I sometimes think it was just a nightmare.”
“If it was, it was one we all shared,” Bill said. “But it did happen. And we have to prepare as best we can.”
