Read Online The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 5) by Perrin Briar - Free Book Online

tossing in his sleep for ten minutes before he sat up and rubbed his eyes. He crept over to Fritz and sat down next to him. Below them were their cattle, which slept standing up, save the goats who nestled together in the corner.
    “Any sign of Spinners?” Ernest said, yawning.
    “Not yet,” Fritz said. “You can go back to sleep, if you like. I’m not tired.”
    “I’d rather stay awake,” Ernest said. “That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there.”
    Fritz touched his puffed up eye and flinched.
    “The Spinner really caught me a winner,” he said.
    “You hit the floor like a sack of spuds!” Ernest said.
    Jack mumbled in his sleep, and then fell silent again.
    “Thanks for helping me,” Fritz said.
    “We’re brothers,” Ernest said. “It’s what we’re meant to do, right?”
    Ernest looked at his hands.
    “I dreamt about them,” he said.
    “And?” Fritz said.
    “And no matter what I did I couldn’t escape,” Ernest said. “I have no idea how to beat them.”
    “None of us do,” Fritz said.
    “But I’m the ideas guy,” Ernest said. “If I don’t come up with a solution…”
    “This is all our problem,” Fritz said. “It’s not up to you to save us. But we need to come up with something soon. The sun will rise in a couple of hours and right now we don’t have a clue what to do.”
    “Do you think we’ll end up leaving?” Ernest said.
    “After we worked so hard in defending our home?” Fritz said. “No, I don’t think so.”
    “This has got you worried though, hasn’t it?” Ernest said. “Not knowing what we’re going to do?”
    “I think we’re all worried,” Fritz said.
    “I’m not,” Ernest said.
    “You just said you were,” Fritz said.
    “No,” Ernest said. “I said I know you’re all worried.”
    “Then why aren’t you?” Fritz said.
    “Because I know we’ll come up with something,” Ernest said.
    “What if we don’t?” Fritz said.
    “We will,” Ernest said.
    “But what if we don’t?” Fritz said.
    Ernest looked off at the horizon, the sun just beginning to crest the jungle. A frown creased his forehead as if the thought had never occurred to him before.
    “Okay, now I am worried,” he said. “Thanks. Maybe, given enough time, the Spinners will spin their way off the island.”
    “Leaving us without cattle, without crops, with nothing but a dead island,” Fritz said. “I’m not sure if I’d put much stock in that idea.”
    “Me neither, to be honest,” Ernest said.
    He looked down between his feet at the ground below.
    “I miss home,” Ernest said.
    “This is home,” Fritz said.
    “I mean our real home,” Ernest said. “Do you think our friends and family are still there?”
    “Probably,” Fritz said. “Though I hope they’re of a livelier disposition than our current company on this island.”
    “I remember in History, studying the French invasion of Switzerland in 1798,” Ernest said. “Chucerne was the only town capable of resisting them. We didn’t have a huge population or well-trained troops. We survived because of the terrain. There is only one way in and out of Churcerne. The land itself protected us, like Russia with her frigid winters. Do you think they could defend themselves like that again?”
    “There’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again, I suppose,” Fritz said. “But it’s better to expect nothing. For everyone to be gone, and then when we go there, if there are people left, we can be happy and not depressed. It can only be better than we expected.”
    “Until then you live in fear,” Ernest said.
    “No, I live in hope,” Fritz said. “I just won’t be as disappointed as you will be.”
    Ernest looked out at the moon hanging low and bright in the sky, the craters massive like pock marks on its shiny surface.
    “It’s not so bad here though, is it?” he said.
    “Not so bad,” Fritz said. “Except there’s no future here.”
    “It’s the same everywhere these days,” Ernest