Read Online The Swiss Family RobinZOM by Perrin Briar - Free Book Online Page A

lumbered toward the tiger, who, feeling
fear, backed into the corner again. The Lurchers fell on the tiger,
which clawed and bit and chewed and roared, but was overpowered by
the incessant Lurcher onslaught. The tiger jumped at a Lurcher,
coiled her legs, and sprang off him at the pit’s edge. She reached
with her claws, piercing the earth, and pulled herself up, back
legs clawing at the side of the pit, kicking dirt over the Lurchers
below. She pulled herself free, but a Lurcher was on her. He bit
deep into her back, crunching bone. The tiger roared, kicked him
off, took his head in her jaws and brought them together like a
vice. The Lurcher’s body went limp, and he fell to the ground. The
tiger leapt across another pit, hopped onto a tree trunk that made
up one side of the corridor, and took off into the
jungle.
    “ Jack, Ernest!” Bill
said.
    They pulled their
respective vines . The coconuts fell and
the trunk scythed in. The coconuts crushed the skulls of a dozen
Lurchers, but bounced ineffectively off the bonce of an imposing
figure. The trunk of terror sliced through two rows of Luchers
before striking the ribs of the same large Lurcher. He bore the
brunt of the trunk. He bit at it, tearing a vine with one
bite.
    “ That has got to be the
biggest man I’ve ever seen,” Fritz said.
    Over seven feet tall if
he was an inch, he lumbered over to a pit , stood at the edge, reached for the bait and plucked it
like it were a piece of fruit from a low hanging tree.
    “ Stop him!” Bill said.
“He’s eating the bait! Shoot him!”
    The whole family took aim
and fired at the huge Lurcher. He was as bald as a cue ball, and
though he wore no helmet, it seemed to act as protection
anyway , the arrows bouncing off his
skull. Ernest, the closest of all the Robinsons, edged to the
fringe of the tree branch he stood on.
    “ Hey!” Ernest
said.
    Three dozen heads,
including the big man ’s, turned. Ernest
pulled back the bowstring and aimed dead centre at the big
Lurcher’s forehead. He released. The arrow shot through the man’s
head and out the back. It embedded itself into the foot of another
Lurcher. Some brain matter was attached to it. The big Lurcher
stood for a moment, put a hand to the hole in his forehead, and
then slumped forward onto his knees, and then his face. Some of the
Lurchers spotted Jack and Ernest, precarious on their branches, and
approached the trees they were in. They began chomping at the bark,
eating, biting and scratching with their teeth and clawed
fingers.
    “ Get out of those trees!”
Bill said. “Move to another one!”
    Jack leapt to the next
tree without a moment’s hesitation, but Ernest lacked the same
confidence. He sat down and edged his way along the branch inch by
laborious inch. The Lurchers gathered underneath him, arms
outstretched, fingertips grazing the tip of his boots. The other
Lurchers continued to gnaw at the tree trunk.
    “ He’s not going to make
it!” Liz said.
    The branch Ernest held onto was not thick. It wobbled up
and down, and there was the sound of snapping wood fibres. Ernest
stared down at the chomping teeth and outstretched arms reaching
for him. He looked over at his family.
    “ Help me!” he
said.
    Fritz took a step forward.
    “ No,” Bill
said.
    “ We have to do
something!” Fritz said.
    Bill reached into his pocket and took out his gun. He opened the
chamber. Four bullets. He pulled the hammer back and aimed it at a
random Lurcher. He pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into the
head of a Lurcher, hitting the side of its head and caving it in.
Thick blood oozed out of the hole, and the Lurcher fell to the
ground. The Lurchers turned to peer at the origin of the sound, and
though not all the Lurchers turned to head toward them, many did.
Bill fired again, blowing away another Lurcher. More Lurchers
turned to face the family.
    With the number of Lurchers clawing at him reduced,
Ernest got to his knees, and then his feet. He edged back along