Zom-B Underground (2 page)

As four of the boys drop their helmets and study me with dark, suspicious expressions, the girl called Cathy takes off hers. She’s scowling. She points the nozzle of her flamethrower at me again.

“She attacked Rage,” Cathy growls. “I say we finish her off.”

“They don’t want us to,” one of the boys mutters, nodding at the ceiling, then pointing at a window, where the people on the other side of the glass are watching calmly.

“All the more reason to burn her,” Cathy sneers.

“Hold it!” the tall one–Rage–barks. He’s still wearing his helmet. He strides over to the girl with the flamethrower and stares at her through the dark lens of his visor. “Nobody breaks the rules around here.”

“But she attacked you,” Cathy pouts. “She tried to kill you.”

“Yeah,” Rage says. “You would have too in her position. She’s a zom head. We have to hand her over.”

“She might not be,” Cathy says. She still hasn’t lowered the flamethrower.

Rage tilts his head, then looks back at me. “Got anything to say for yourself?”

Unable to express myself with words, I give him the finger.

Rage chuckles drily, then takes off his helmet. He’s got a big head, hair cut even shorter than mine, chubby cheeks–a chunk of flesh has been bitten out of the left cheek and a layer of green moss grows lightly around it–small ears, beady eyes. He’s grinning wickedly.

“Whaddaya know,” he jeers, reaching out and bending my finger down.
“It’s aliiiiive!”

As I stare at him, more confused than I’ve ever been, a door swishes open. Soldiers and medics spill into the room and fan out around us.

The madness begins.

I’m B Smith and I’m a zombie.

I study my face in the small mirror in my cell, looking for a monster but only finding myself. I look much the same as I did before I was killed, hair shaved tight, pale skin, a few freckles, a mole on the far right of my jaw, light blue eyes, a nose that’s a bit too wide for my face. But if I stare long enough I start to notice subtle differences.

Like those blue eyes I was always so pleased about. (I was never a girlie girl, but they were my best feature and, yeah, I used to admire them every so often if I was feeling gooey.) They’re not as shiny as they were. They look like they’ve dried out. That’s because they have.

I tilt my head back and pour several
drops from a bottle into each eye, then shake my head gently from side to side to work the liquid about. Reilly gave me the bottle. He also taught me how to shake my head the right way.

“You can’t blink anymore.”

That was several days ago, not long after I was brought to my cell from the room of fire. I was bundled in here without anyone saying anything, no explanations, no sympathy, no warnings. After the horror show with the zombies and the gang in leather, a group of soldiers simply shuffled me along a series of corridors, stuck me here and left me alone.

For a few hours I paced around the small cell. There was nothing in it then, no mirror, no bed, no bucket. Just a sink that didn’t have running water. I was wild with questions, theories, nightmarish speculations. I knew that I’d been killed and come back to life as a zombie. But why had my thoughts returned? Why could I remember my past? Why was I able to reason?

The zombies in Pallaskenry and my school were mindless, murdering wrecks. They killed because they couldn’t control their unnatural hunger for brains. The zombies in the room were the same, single-minded killing machines on legs.

Except I thought that those teenagers with the weapons were zombies too. Rage had definitely been bitten by one of the undead—the moss growing around his cheek was proof of that. But they could talk and think and act the same way they could when they were alive.

What the hell was going on?

Reilly was the first person to enter my cell that day. A thickset soldier with brown hair and permanent stubble, he brought in a chair, closed the door behind him, put the chair in front of me and sat.

“You can’t blink anymore,” he said.

“
Uh urh ooh?
” I grunted, forgetting that I couldn’t speak.

“You can’t talk either,” he noted drily. “We’ll sort out your mouth soon but you should tend to your eyes first. Your vision will have suffered already, but the more they dry out, the worse it’ll get.”

He produced a plastic bottle of eye drops and passed it to me. As I stared at it suspiciously, he chuckled. “It’s not a trick. If we wanted to harm you, we’d have fried you in the lab. Your eyelids don’t work. Go on, try them, see for yourself.”

I tried to close my eyes but nothing happened. If I furrowed my brow it forced them partly closed into a squint, but they wouldn’t move by themselves. I reached for them to pull the lids down. Then I saw the bones sticking out of my fingers and stopped, afraid I might scratch my eyeballs.

“Good call,” Reilly said. “Revitalizeds all come close to poking out an eye—a few actually did before we could warn them. Most reviveds instinctively know to keep their hands away from their eyes, but you guys…” He snorted, then told me how to administer the drops.

I stare at myself in the mirror again and wipe streaks from the drops away as they drip down my cheeks—the closest I’m ever
going to get to tears now that I’m dead. My eyes look better, but still not as moist and sharp as they once did. I can see clearly, but my field of vision is narrower and the world’s a bit darker than when I was alive, as if I’m staring through a thin gray veil.

I open my mouth and examine my teeth. Run a tongue over them, but carefully. I nicked it loads of times the first few days and I still catch myself occasionally.

After Reilly had given me the drops, he told me why I couldn’t talk.

“Your teeth have sprouted. When you returned from the dead, they thickened and lengthened into fangs. That’s so you can bite through flesh and bone more easily.” He said it casually, as if it were no big thing.

“The bones in your fingers serve the same purpose,” he went on. “They let you dig through a person’s skull. Better than daggers, they are. We’re not sure why it happens in your toes as well. Maybe the zombie gene can’t distinguish between one set of digits and the other.”

I wanted to cry when he said that. I don’t know why, but something about his tone tore a long, deep hole through my soul. I made a moaning noise and hung my head, but no tears came. They couldn’t. My tear ducts have dried up. I can never weep again.

Reilly went on to explain how they were going to file my teeth down. They’d use an electric file to start me off, but after that I could trim them with a metal file myself every day or two.

“It’ll be like brushing your teeth,” he said cheerfully. “A few minutes in the morning, again at night before you go to bed, and they’ll be fine.” He paused. “Although you won’t really need to go to bed now….”

It’s been hard keeping track of the days, but by totaling up Reilly’s visits I figure I’ve been here at least a week, maybe longer. And not a wink of sleep in all that time. They gave me a bed, and I lie down every now and then to rest, but I never come close to dropping off.

“The dead don’t sleep,” Reilly shrugged when I asked him why I couldn’t doze. “They don’t need to.”

I was nervous when a medic first filed my teeth down. I always hated going to the dentist, and this was a hundred times worse. The noise was louder than any dentist’s drill, and splinters from my teeth went flying back in my throat and up my nose and into my eyes. My teeth got hot from the friction and my gums felt like they were burning. I pushed the medic away several times to snarl at him and give him an evil glare.

“Just don’t bite,” Reilly warned me. “If you nip him and turn him into one of your lot, you’ll be put down like a rabid dog, no excuses.”

The medic wiped sweat from his forehead and I realized he was more nervous than I was. He was wearing thick gloves, but as I’d seen in the room when the woman bit the tall guy in leathers, clothes and gloves aren’t foolproof against a zombie attack.

I tried to control myself after that, and didn’t pull back as much as I had been doing, even though every part of me wanted to.

The medic left once he’d finished. I ran my tongue around my mouth and winced as one of my teeth nicked it.

“I should have warned you about that,” Reilly said. “Doesn’t matter how much you file them down, they’ll always be sharper than they were. Best thing is to keep your tongue clear of your teeth.”

“Thash eashy fuhr you tuh shay,” I mumbled.

“Hey, not bad for your first attempt,” Reilly said, looking impressed. “Most of the revitalizeds take a few days to get their act together. I think you’re going to be a fast learner.”

“Shkroo you, arsh hohl,” I spat, and his expression darkened.

“Maybe you were better off mute,” he growled.

It took me a while to get the hang of my new teeth. I still slur the occasional word, but a week into my new life–or unlife, or whatever the hell it’s called–I can speak as clearly as I could before I was killed.

“B Smith went to mow, went to mow a meadow,” I sing tunelessly to my reflection. “But a zombie ripped her heart out, so now she’s a walking dead-o.”

Hey, I might be dead, but you’ve gotta laugh, haven’t you? Especially when you’re no longer able to cry your bloody eyes out.

Lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Mum and Dad.

Reilly hasn’t told me anything about the outside world. We’ve spent a lot of time together. He chats with me about all sorts of things, soccer, TV shows we used to watch, our lives before the zombie uprising. But he won’t discuss the attack on my school or any of the other assaults that took place that day. I’ve no idea if order has been restored or if the soldiers and medics here are the only people left alive in the whole wide world. I’ve pushed him hard for answers, but although Reilly’s been good to me, he can play deaf and dumb to perfection when he wants.

I’ve said a few prayers for Mum and Dad, even though I’m not the praying
type. For Mum especially. It’s strange. I thought I loved Dad more. He was the one I respected, the one I wanted to impress. Mum was weak in my opinion, a coward and a fool for letting her husband knock her about the place. I stood up for her and always tried to help when he’d lay into her, because that’s what you do for your mum, but if you’d ask me to name a favorite, I’d have chosen Dad, despite all his flaws.

But she’s the one I miss most. Maybe it’s because of what Dad did the day I died. He came to rescue me. Risked his own life to try to save me. But then he made me throw Tyler to the zombies, turned me into a killer, and since then…

No. That’s a lie, and I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. I’ve done too much of that in the past. Be truthful, B. Dad didn’t force me. I threw Tyler to the zombies because I was scared and it was the easy thing to do.

Dad hated foreigners and people who had different beliefs. I never wanted to be like him in that respect, but to keep him quiet I acted as if I was, and in the end it rubbed off on me. I became a monster. I don’t ever want to allow that to happen again, but if I’m to keep the beast inside me under control, I have to accept that the guilt was mine for doing what Dad told me to do. You can’t blame other people for sins of your own making.

I sit up, swing my legs off the bed and scowl. No use worrying about Mum and Dad until I have more information. I’m sure answers will be revealed in time. They can’t be keeping me alive just
to hold me in this cell forever. I have to be patient. Explanations will come. If I have to mourn, I’ll do it once their deaths are confirmed. Until then I need to hope for the best.

To distract myself, I focus on the throbbing noise. It’s constant, the rumbling of machines in the distance, AC, oxygen being pumped in for the living. It never ceases. It drove me mad for the first few days, but now I find it comforting. Without a TV, iPod, or anything else, it’s the only way I have of amusing myself when Reilly’s not around. I tune into the hum when I’m bored and try to put images to the noises, to imagine what’s happening outside this cell, soldiers marching, medics conducting their experiments, the teenagers in leather….

Hmm. I’ve no idea who they were. I’m pretty sure, judging by the green moss on the tall guy’s cheek, that they’re like me, zombies who can think and act the way they did before they died. Reilly refers to us as
revitalizeds
. The ordinary, mindless zombies are
reviveds
. But why were the revitalizeds in that room with weapons? Are they prisoners like me, or are they cooperating with the soldiers? Where did they come from? Why are they–we–different from the others? Is there hope for us? Can we be cured?

I sneer at that last question. “Of course you can’t be cured, you dumb bitch,” I snort. “Not unless you can find the Wizard of Oz to give you a brand-new heart.”

I get up and stand in front of the mirror. I seem to be studying myself a lot recently. It’s not that I’m vain. There just isn’t anything
else to do. But I’m not interested in my face this time. I was wearing the shredded, filthy remains of my school uniform when I regained consciousness. That’s been replaced with a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt.