The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 4) by Perrin Briar Page A

for the jungle foliage, suddenly energised with a sense of purpose. Moonlight streamed through the dark canopy, highlighting the labyrinth of jutting tree roots.
    “I’m going to need your eyes tonight, Nips,” Jack said. “Lead me to Greenie Stripie. Go on. Find it.”

II
     
    Nips began hesitantly, taking tiny steps, turning to look back at Jack every ten seconds. Earlier in the day Jack remembered passing through this same jungle with a feeling of euphoria, but now there was just fear, a sinister distrust in every sound and unexpected movement of the canopy.
    “Go on,” Jack said to Nips. “Faster.”
    Nips climbed a thick branch and hopped across to another. Jack could hardly make out the trees they were traversing, so he followed the patch of white fur on the back of Nips’s head like a beacon in the night.
    Jack scrabbled at a branch now and then, his speed lessened with the oppressive blackness of night. Nips slowed down each time Jack stumbled.
    Jack slowed further when his vision blurred. Nips seemed to be a dozen yards ahead, when Jack knew he was just a few paces away. The illness was tightening its grip on him, but he did not panic. At least, not yet.
    Jack’s foot slipped on a thick carpet of damp moss. He hit his head on the branch and fell, spiralling, to the ground. Something bent beneath him, cradling and breaking his fall. He rolled to the side, off the hedge. Some small creatures made a break for it, their home crushed. Jack dusted himself off. Then he heard the least welcoming sound he could imagine.
    It began as a low groan, deathly and hollow, a rattle in the back of a torn throat. It came from somewhere over his shoulder. Jack daren’t look back for fear of freezing on the spot.
    He ran, his feet finding every dry crunchy leaf and snapping twig. The zombie’s groan grew louder in volume as he turned in Jack’s direction. Jack scrambled up the nearest tree. He perched in the crook of a branch and took a moment to catch his breath. Something fell on his lap. Jack jumped. It was Nips.
    Nips turned and climbed along the bough of a tree, beckoning for Jack to follow him. The zombie’s groans remained steady and consistent below, and traced Jack’s movements. Jack proceeded slowly, ensuring the reliability sure of every movement, knowing each could be his last.
    Then came the overpowering scent of azaleas, and Jack recognised his location. He climbed along the bough. It was thinner than he would have liked and creaked with ominous threats long before he got to the end of it.
    He looked up the sheer cliff, at the top of which was the object of his desire: a yellow petalled dainty flower with green stripes. Jack lowered his eyes to a hole in the side of the cliff he could use as a handhold. It mawed before him, two metres away. Below him, a thirty foot drop to an outcrop of rock. A wheezing groan rose up below him, fingers straining for him like wriggling worms.
    Jack unconsciously leaned to the side, his sense of balance deserting him, and he knew it wouldn’t be long now before he became unconscious.
    He crouched down and waited for his sense of balance to return. It sawed in one direction and then another, and finally settled into an orbit Jack felt was right. He took a few steps back, the branch wobbling under his weight. He ran and threw his weight forward, the branch snapping beneath him. Jack rose in the air, and he knew with certainly he’d overdone it the second his foot left the branch. He’d been so afraid of under-jumping that he’d inadvertently overcompensated.
    The hole he was aiming for fell away, the sheer rock face rising up to meet him. Another hole, like a pockmark on the moon, flew at him. He grasped for it. Gravity made its hungry gambit for him the moment he hit the wall, but his hands hooked into the handhold.
    Jack pulled himself up, feet kicking at the wall for purchase, for a toehold, anything. And then he found it – a short protuberance of dirt, but it was enough.