The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 5) (4 page)

Clementine raced along the sand, her strides growing longer as they ate up the beach. Fritz checked over his shoulder and moved his arms even faster to coax as much speed out of Lightfoot as he could. But they grew larger as Clementine drew closer.

Ernest turned his head to one side to avoid the sand that had been whipped up into a thick fog by Valiant. When he emerged out onto the other side he was startled to find he couldn’t see the finish line. As the sand began to settle he realised he had already crossed it. There was no one ahead of him.

“Yes!” Ernest said, fists raised high in the air. “Come on! Yes! None of you thought an ostrich could win! Haha! I showed you! I showed you all!”

Ernest reached up and kissed Clementine on the beak.

“You beauty!” he said. “You’re the most beautiful creature in the world! Well, maybe not actually the most beautiful, but metaphorically you might be. In a sense.”

He stopped cheering, realising no one was listening to him. The dust died down and the air became clear, revealing the rest of the Robinson family two dozen yards away. They had all gotten off their animals, which stood milling around on the fringes of the jungle, skittish, uncertain and fearful. They cast wary glances toward the black shape lying on the beach at the Robinson family’s feet.

Fear gripped Ernest’s heart. Had Fritz or Francis come off their animals? Of the two he feared most for Francis. If he had pushed Valiant too hard he might have fallen, the mighty bull rolling over him and crushing him beneath his enormous weight. Ernest held his breath and drove Clementine toward them.

When he got within a dozen yards, Clementine got spooked and wouldn’t go any closer. Ernest climbed down off her and let her run back to the other animals. Ernest approached his family on foot.

“What’s up?” he said. “Is anything wrong? Is Francis okay?”

A black lifeless object lay across the sand, head flopped to one side. It lifted its head and emitted a deep groan that was full of pain and fear, as powerful and full of heartbroken emotions as a slave’s blues melody. Though it was weak, it still resonated across the entire beach and several miles out to sea, a warning to any creature listening that it was not yet dead and would not be an easy kill. One look at its wounds proved the falsehood of that claim.

“First a tiger, now a jaguar,” Bill said. “I wonder what other dangerous creatures there are on this island.”

“With zombies out there I think Pantherinae are the last thing we should be worried about,” Ernest said.

The beast’s big yellow cat eyes stared back at them all.

“They look a lot bigger in real life, don’t they?” Ernest said.

“Really?” Jack said. “It looks small to me.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Ernest said.

“He’s dying,” Bill said. “Something attacked him.”

The jaguar was smothered in blood, deep cuts across its body like it had been used in a tic-tac-toe championship.

“But by what?” Ernest said.

“Couldn’t it have gotten into a fight with another jaguar?” Liz said.

“It could,” Bill said, nodding. “Except for the marks on its flanks.”

Bill put his hand to the jaguar’s haunch, which was crisscrossed with deep gouges. His fingers fit perfectly against them.

“You did it?” Jack said.

“Yes,” Bill said. “While you all sleep I’ve been wrestling and mutilating jaguars. Of course I didn’t do it.”

“Some of the blood on its fur looks coagulated,” Ernest said.

“This was done by human hands,” Bill said. “Or something similar to us.”

“Zombies,” Liz said.

“Do you think more of them have gotten to the island?” Fritz said.

“Could be,” Bill said. “Or they’re from the same cruise liner we saw before, just having managed to avoid us all this time. Either way, we have to check and make sure there aren’t too many of them. We’ll have to go scouting to find them.”

“If they came here by the sea, we’d better do a sweep of the beaches, hadn’t we?” Fritz said. “In case there are more on board.”

“We just rode around the seashore,” Ernest said. “I’m sure one of us would have noticed a boat.”

“Maybe not,” Bill said. “We were distracted.”

“But it couldn’t have been a large ship,” Ernest said. “We would have noticed it.”

“Either way we have to do a scout of the island,” Bill said. “To get rid of these things.”

The jaguar looked around at its audience and let out a deep groan. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth. Bill wore a deep frown.

“Is something wrong?” Liz said.

“It’s probably nothing,” Bill said. “It’s just, jaguars sleep in trees. And I don’t believe jaguars are particularly slow creatures.”

“So?” Liz said.

“So how did slow moving zombies manage to maul a jaguar so badly?” Ernest said. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Pa?”

“It is,” Bill said, nodding. “He must have fallen out of the tree and gotten injured, though I don’t see any broken bones. How else could the zombies have gotten him? I don’t understand why he didn’t run way. Zombies could never hope to keep up with him. They’re slow and stupid. No, something fast got to him and wouldn’t let go until it was done with him. Which makes me wonder why they didn’t kill him when they had the chance.”

“Then it wasn’t a zombie?” Fritz said.

“I don’t know,” Bill said. “But it’s mighty strange.”

The jaguar let out another low groan of pain. Bill kneeled down next to it and placed his hand on its head. It raised its paw in defence, but lacked the strength to do much more than gently pat Bill’s arm.

“Sh, sh, sh,” Bill said. “It’s all right.”

Bill slipped his knife deep into the jaguar’s neck. The big cat’s eyes snapped open wide, a snuffled squawk escaping its throat. Its eyes rolled back into its head and its tongue lolled out of its mouth, body going lax. Bill laid the jaguar’s head down.

“There are dangerous creatures on the island,” Bill said. “We’d best be on our guard. We’ll go hunting for them in the morning. Until then, no one goes into the jungle by themselves. Understood?”

The family nodded.

The sea lapped against the unmoving black shadow on the sand. It washed him out to sea as if he had never existed at all.

Bill, Fritz, Ernest and Jack walked through the undergrowth, each looking out in a different direction. They wore their armour; coconut helmets, knee and elbow pads, bamboo tubes over their arms and legs, and dried tar boots on their feet. In their hands they gripped cudgels with knobbly bumps on the end, the low surface area ideal for smashing open skulls.

“I was thinking about what kind of zombies these things might be,” Jack said.

“Oh yeah?” Bill said.

“I was thinking, what if they’re intelligent?” Jack said.

“Intelligent how?” Bill said.

“At plans and things,” Jack said. “Like us. They could have caught the jaguar and then attacked it.”

“It’s a nice idea,” Bill said. “But so far we’ve seen hundreds of these things and none of them has an IQ over five.”

“But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” Jack said.

“No,” Ernest said. “But there’s any number of things that might exist.”

“Like chocolate teapots,” Fritz said.

“Or waterproof teabags,” Ernest said.

“Or inflatable dartboards,” Fritz said.

“Enough of that, you two,” Bill said. “There’s something out here. We need to be on our sharpest if we’re to find it before it finds us.”

“I think I found it,” Ernest said. “Or, at least, a sign of it.”

Ernest put his hand to a broad tree trunk, a trunk that had three long claw marks slashed diagonally across it. The outer bark had been torn away, leaving the inner yellow sapwood visible.

“Looks like Wolverine stopped by,” Ernest said.

“What could have done this?” Fritz said.

Bill put his three middle fingers to the markings, which, when clawed, fit perfectly.

“The same thing that killed the jaguar,” he said.

A pheasant whistled and honked as it flew from a bush and floated on the air away from them. Fritz, Ernest and Jack spun around, wary, cudgels raised. Bill bent down, looking at the snapped foliage on the ground. He pressed the foliage over to one side.

“He went this way,” Bill said, following the tracks.

“I can’t make out any footprints,” Fritz said.

“That’s because they’re not footprints,” Bill said. “It’s a handprint. He doesn’t move the way we do. It seems to twist around in circles, scratching anything that gets close to it. Here, look. He damaged another tree.”

“Maybe he’s doing it to remember where he’s going,” Ernest said. “Some animals do that.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. He didn’t sound convinced.

At times the tracks consisted of footprints, other times handprints with missing fingers, but most were indented circles, like someone had pushed their elbow into the soil. There were more deep scratches in the trees – always at different depths and angles; sometimes curled up from the base of the tree, sometimes an entire trunk had been denuded as if a bear had used it to sharpen its claws.

Then they heard an odd sound, a whooshing noise like a man shaking his head side to side rapidly, letting his cheeks flap against his teeth.

Flap, flap, flap. Flap, flap.

“What in God’s name was that?” Fritz said.

The sound quietened, and then came again.

Flap, flap. Flap.

“What is that?” Fritz said.

The Robinsons crawled up a small rise on their forearms and peered down into the dimple of land amongst the trees. Something moved amongst them, hacking at a sequoia like a samurai at a block of wood.

“Oh my God,” Jack said. “What is
that
?”

It was in a constant state of motion, twisting and turning, performing an inelegant form of acrobatics that would make the performers at Cirque du Soleil envious. The creature had four limbs – each of them at the corner of its body. Two of the limbs ended with stubs, one resembling a human foot, the other a claw. It was hard to make out details with the way it was spinning around in circles and kicking up dirt and foliage from the jungle floor. It never stopped moving, always spinning and turning over and rolling in the dirt, like an uncoordinated break dancer. As it spun it made a strange noise, like a washing machine with a broken rubber ring.

Flap, flap, flap, flap.

“What’s wrong with it?” Jack said. “It’s attacking everything it gets close to.”

Fritz turned to Jack.

“Bang goes your theory about intelligent zombies,” he said. “These things must be the dumbest things to have walked the earth.”

“What is it?” Ernest said. “An alien?”

“I think it used to be a man,” Bill said. “You see the limbs? I think they’re arms and legs.”

“Let’s go put it out of its misery,” Fritz said.

“How?” Jack said “It doesn’t have a head!”

The others peered at the unfortunate creature.

“Huh,” Bill said. “Would you look at that. How didn’t any of us notice that?”

“Maybe because zombies never seem to use their heads, we forgot to check if this one even had one,” Fritz said.

“You can see the severed neck where it used to be,” Bill said. “That’s what must be making that flapping noise.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jack said.

“What happened to him?” Ernest said. “He should be dead.”

“By all rights it should be,” Bill said. “But then nature never held much sway over these things. There are stories of chickens losing their heads and being able to survive for days after. They’re not really alive of course, but the muscles of the creatures keep firing and it gives the appearance of animation.”

The creature bounced off a tree, scratched it, and then spun in the opposite direction.

“How come we haven’t seen one of them before now?” Ernest said.

“For all we know they might be all over the world,” Bill said. “We were just lucky enough to have not have seen them before.”

“How do we kill it?” Fritz said.

“I’m not sure,” Bill said.

“Usually we smack their heads in and it’s game over,” Fritz said. “But this one…”

“This thing could very well still carry the virus,” Bill said. “We must be careful. We’ll start by breaking its limbs. With no claws it’ll be helpless.”

Fritz watched the creature rotated in a never-ending spin, volley after volley raining down on the trees around it. It looked like a robot gone haywire.

“It doesn’t look like it’ll be all that helpless to me,” he said.

Ernest got up onto his knees. If the creature turned he would have been clearly visible. Bill put his hand on Ernest’s arm.

“Ernest?” Bill said. “What are you doing? Get down!”

“It doesn’t have eyes,” Ernest said. “It can’t see us.”

“It might have some other way of sensing us,” Bill said.

“We’d be better prepared if we know, won’t we?” Ernest said.

Bill thought for a moment and then released his grip on Ernest’s arm. Ernest stood up. He looked down at the creature. Ernest’s knees felt weak. He worked his dry mouth. What if he was wrong?

“Hey,” Ernest said.

The creature didn’t respond.

“Hey!” Ernest said, louder and with more confidence.

The creature froze, turned in Ernest’s direction, and then spun around in circles.

“It’s okay,” Ernest said to the others. “It can’t hear or sense us.”

The creature hacked at a tree with its nails, coiling and flying out, painting the bark black with its bloody finger stubs.

The Robinsons stood up and descended the short incline, giving one another swinging space. They surrounded the creature. They kept an eye out around them, but there didn’t appear to be more of the spinning creatures. It spun before them now, moving slowly and in no particular direction. Bill raised his cudgel and the others followed suit, waiting for the creature to strike. It never did.

Bill took the initiative, running forward and striking the creature across the chest. There was a solid thump, and the creature bounced back from the blow, like a top that had struck a wall, toward Fritz, who beat the creature across the back. The flesh caved in, but the creature did not stop. It only spun faster, this time toward Ernest, who struck it across the left arm, which snapped. It came toward Jack, faster than ever, but he swung his cudgel and it connected with the creature’s leg.

It rained blows on their armour as the Robinsons’ assault slowed. They could hardly keep up with the spinning creature as it was passed from one member to another, like piggy in the middle, except the Robinsons felt like
they
were the piggies.

“It’s getting faster!” Fritz said, swinging at it again.

“Break its legs!” Bill said.

The creature’s legs were now up in the air, and it stood on its deformed arms. The Robinsons swung at the legs. The bones cracked, snapping in a dozen places. The legs flopped to one side, and the creature spun on one of its broken limbs like a child’s bicycle wheel after an accident. The Robinsons attacked again, this time breaking the creature’s ribs and spine, hips and every other bone they could target. But it had no effect. The creature only spun faster and faster, absorbing their blows and turning them into energy.

“It’s not working!” Fritz said. “He’s just getting faster!”

“I have an idea!” Ernest said. “Cover me for a second.”

Fritz stepped into Ernest’s position, filling the gap. Ernest looked up at the canopy overhead and jumped, stretching for a length of vine. His fingers grazed it. He jumped again and managed to grab it. He tugged it down. The vine came loose, but Ernest didn’t pull the end free, and let it stay attached to the treetops. He ran forward and hurled the vines at the creature. It struck the creature’s torso and then hit the ground.

“Wow,” Fritz said. “That’s an awesome ultimate weapon you’ve got there.”

“Wait for it,” Ernest said.

Bill batted the creature, and it spun away from him, running over the vine. It tightened, and as the creature spun the vines wrapped around its limbs, lashing the creature together tighter and tighter. The vine spilled from the trees, slowing the creature as its straightjacket grew bulky. The creature slowed, but never really stopped moving. Its body thrusted and writhed within its cocoon, but it had stopped spinning.

“Well done, Ernest,” Bill said, hands on his knees and breathing in deep breaths. “There was no way we were going to be able to stop it the way we were going.”

“Did you see it getting faster?” Fritz said. “The harder we hit it the faster it spun!”

“It’s still moving,” Ernest said. “I don’t suppose it’ll ever stop.”

The vines throbbed like a heartbeat as the creature continued to jerk, like a bird jabbing at the inside of its shell to get out.

“What are we going to do with it?” Fritz said.

“Burn it, I suppose,” Bill said. “There’s nothing else that will stop it.”

The vine cocoon began to turn anticlockwise, unspooling.

“Uh, guys,” Jack said.

One arm came loose as the vines slackened. Then another limb came free, and the creature began to spin in the opposite direction to the one it had when it was trussed up. Soon the torso was visible. Fritz and Ernest stepped forward with their cudgels.

“What do we do now?” Fritz said.

“Switch to blades,” Bill said.

The boys exchanged wary expressions. Bill had never suggested they do that before. They holstered their cudgels and reached back for the handles jutting out over their heads. Bill and Fritz sported razor sharp machetes, Ernest and Jack short-handled axes with flint blades.

The creature was winding free of the last of its prison, gaining purchase on the ground. Bill roared and ran at the creature, slamming it through the chest, pinning it to the tree behind it. It jerked and convulsed and spun around in a circle like a wheel. The boys rushed forward and hacked at it, crushing the bones and arms and rotten flesh, but it seemed to have no effect as the creature kept spinning, lashing out at them.

Exhausted, Jack fell back. Bill took up his axe and hacked at the creature with venom. Arms shaking and unable to lift his axe again, Ernest joined Jack. Only Bill and Fritz still slashed at the creature. Bill brought his axe down on it, severing one arm, and then again, another arm, and then, with two powerful hacks, at the creature’s legs. Its limbs fell to the ground, convulsing. Bill and Fritz, panting for oxygen, stepped back.

The creature tore free of the machete through its chest, tearing a chunk of its flesh away, a mass of decomposed innards sloshing to the ground. The creature, body still convulsing, pulled itself away. It was gone, but its limbs remained, writhing on the forest floor.

“Don’t touch them!” Bill said.

“I’m not going to,” Fritz said.

He approached the limbs and made a noose with a length of the discarded vine. He lowered it around the arm and let it tighten around it as the arm twisted. He picked it up, holding it like a demon from hell. He did the same with the second arm.

“This is pointless,” Ernest said. “We shouldn’t be thinking of them as zombies. They’re not zombies. They’re something else. We need to approach them differently.”