Zom-B Gladiator (11 page)

I shrug off the woman and race towards a nearby pole. The men follow. I jump into the air, grab the pole and whirl around. I stick my legs out and my right
foot connects with one of the men’s jaw. His head snaps back and he staggers away.

‘Oh, nice shot,’ The Prince applauds. ‘We never saw any of the others execute a move like that.’

‘It’s like watching a wrestling match,’ Lady Jemima cackles.

‘Only the result isn’t fixed,’ Justin laughs.

I tune out the babbling members of the Board and stay focused. Any one of these zombies could
slice my skull open. I can’t afford to get cocky.

The boy shambles towards me, still grimacing from the kick between his legs. I hate doing this to him, but the shot is there to be taken, so I swing my foot back, then kick him square in the nuts again.

‘Unbelievable!’ Lord Luca hoots.

‘He’ll be a eunuch by the end of this,’ Vicky Wedge sniggers.

‘It’s bringing tears to my eyes,’
Dan-Dan squeals, crossing his hands in front of his groin.

One of the men tackles me from behind and locks his arms across my chest. The other man charges me from the front. I lift my legs, clasp them around his neck in a scissor motion and snap it. He groans and wheels away, tugging at his head, trying to set it straight.

The man behind me squeezes, but there’s no air in my lungs, so
he doesn’t do much damage. While he’s trying to suffocate me, I twist my body the way I was trained by Master Zhang and throw him over my shoulder. He lands heavily in front of me. I make a blade of my fingers and drive my right hand through the centre of his forehead. He cries out, shudders, then falls still. I withdraw my hand and wipe it across his hair, cleaning my flesh of bits of the dead
man’s brain.

The woman slashes at me with the bones sticking out of her fingers. I block them with my own fingerbones, then jab at her eyes, forcing her back.

The boy lurches at me from the other side. He still hasn’t properly protected his crown jewels, but I’m not able to find the angle to kick him a third time. He grabs me and digs his teeth into my left hip, tearing through my trousers,
into the flesh.

I wince and club the boy over the head. His skull snaps and some of the flesh tears open. I spot brain and swiftly dig in, finishing him off. After the blows to his wedding tackle, I think death comes as a relative blessing.

The woman hurls herself at me, shrieking. For all I know, she was the boy’s mother in life. Not that I think that factors into things now. She only wants to kill the beast who is threatening her. Zombies can’t feel love, pity or affection. But they can feel fear. How unfair is that?

I shimmy out of the woman’s way, slip in behind and get her in a stranglehold. She struggles furiously,
but I was taught how to keep my grip tight. As she reels around the room with me on her back, I bare my fangs and bite into her skull. I chew loose a chunk of flesh and bone, and spit it out. I bite again. The woman mewls and shudders. After I tear away another chunk, there’s enough space for me to jam in my chin, like a pig sticking its snout into a trough. I munch, rip and saw.

Seconds
later the woman collapses beneath me and I push myself to my feet, spitting out brain. The brains of the undead do nothing for me. The taste is vile, nothing like the juicy, enticing brains of the living.

The only one left is the man with the broken neck. He doesn’t provide much resistance. He’s still trying to repair the damage to his spinal cord. I simply have to pad up behind him and
crack his head open.

I step away from the last of the corpses and gaze at my handiwork. Four dead zombies, in addition to the one Vicky killed. It probably didn’t take me more than a couple of minutes to fell them.

The members of the Board are cheering warmly. I glance at them numbly, blood on my hands, brains dribbling from my lips. The Prince winks at me. Lord Luca gives me the thumbs
up. Justin claps louder than the others and shouts over the noise, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, a gladiator is born!’

The nightmare begins for real.

It’s been a week or more since I wound up in the clutches of the Board. A week of almost non-stop fighting, with rests only to allow my captors to sleep, eat and indulge in their other pastimes.

When I’m not needed, I’m kept in a room near the fore of the
cruiser, in what used to be known as a mess. A few hammocks are slung across it. I lie in one of those when I’m relaxing, sometimes for hours without moving, staring at the ceiling with my unblinking eyes, trying to think of a way out of this horror show.

In an ideal world I’d kill the creeps of the Board, free the children and slip away into the night. Since I’m unlikely to score on all
three fronts, I’d settle for murdering the manipulative monsters who think they’re superior to the rest of us.

But there’s not much chance of that. They keep themselves separate. I usually only see them in the converted dining hall when they want me to kill. And then they’re always safe behind their wall of glass. Many of my opponents have tried to smash through that wall. I’ve even thrown
a few of them at it with all my strength while fighting, to test it. Not so much as a crack. It’s tough as steel.

The battles have drained me. Zombies are more resilient than humans, but we’re not inexhaustible. We wear down. I’ve fought four or five times most days, usually against a handful of opponents, but sometimes as many as eight. I’m not stronger than those I’ve come up against,
but I’m sharper. I can outwit and outmanoeuvre them.

Even so, I’ve suffered my share of injuries. I’ve broken several bones. My neck and chest have been slashed, chunks bitten out of my arms and legs. A couple of teeth were smashed from my gums—that
really
hurt and still does.

Justin spoke of keeping me on for months when I first arrived, but I’ll be lucky to last a fortnight, maybe
a bit longer if they reduce the number of daily bouts. I’m a short-term project for them.

I wasn’t going to tell them that I need brains to function, that I’ll regress if I don’t eat. But they know that zombies need to feed to stay sharp, so they supplied me with brains without my having to ask for them, a couple of days after I’d fallen into their foul clutches. Coley delivered the first
batch.

‘Barnes and I rustled these up from corpses on the streets,’ he told me. ‘Not my idea of a good time, but anything to please our lords and ladies.’

‘What if I don’t want to eat?’ I said in a low voice.

Coley shrugged. ‘They’ll see that as a sign of mutiny and give me the order to put you out of your misery. Which is fine by me, so go ahead and refuse.’

I made a sighing noise
and dug in. I wouldn’t have been able to resist for long anyway, not once the brains had been set before me. I’d seen it in the zom heads when they were starved. As you approach the end of consciousness, you lose control. In a few days I’d have dug into the brains regardless.

‘Dan-Dan didn’t want us to go foraging for used brains,’ Coley said as I threw up the remains of the brains once
I’d absorbed the nutrients from them. ‘He had a more novel idea. He wanted to put one of the guards in with you, make you kill him and eat his fresh brain. He’s some piece of work, isn’t he? Makes Barnes and me look like a pair of saints. You didn’t know how lucky you were when we were the worst you had to deal with.’

Coley got that much right. Dan-Dan is a real beauty, full of unpleasant
ideas. He came to see me the day after my first fight. Six guards flanked him and he kept well back. He wanted me to wear a revealing leather outfit, the sort you used to find in seedy adult shops.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ I told him.

‘I’ll kill one of my darlings if you don’t wear it,’ he huffed.

‘That threat won’t work this time,’ I dismissed him. ‘I’ll tell Justin and refuse to fight
in protest. The others wouldn’t like that, would they?’

‘You’re no fun,’ Dan-Dan pouted, then slunk away like the disgusting rat that he is.

Even given my functioning brain, I’d have come unstuck long before now if not for my training. Master Zhang taught me well. I zing around that room like a pinball, striking swiftly, slipping out of reach before my foes can counter. I’m improving
all the time, learning new tricks, finding a whole string of ways to attack and defend. I’d be proud of how I’ve performed if I wasn’t so sickened by what is being asked of me.

The living dead deserve better than this. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for zombies. They’re killers by nature. But they didn’t ask for reanimation or the hunger that drives them. They’re not responsible for their
actions. The rest of us, on the other hand, are. And what we’re doing here is disgraceful. Sure, I’ve killed reviveds before, like in the tunnel under Waterloo Station, but that was to prepare for a battle with evil. It wasn’t for sport.

I tried wriggling off the hook a couple of days ago. I carefully dropped my guard while fighting, moved a bit slower than I could, let myself be pummelled.
That’s when I lost the teeth. I’d planned to lose a whole lot more, to let my opponents carve me up. But Vicky got wise to what I was plotting.

‘You can do better than that, Miss Smith,’ she called out as I circled three undead guys, each double the size of me.

‘Why don’t you come in and try if you think it’s that easy?’ I snarled.

‘That will not be necessary,’ she retaliated. ‘I
can see what you’re up to. The stench of treachery is thick in the air. You want out. Rest assured, if you are defeated today, every one of Dan-Dan’s darlings will be executed within the hour. And it will not be swift or painless.’

I cursed Vicky Wedge and the rest of them, but they had me by the short and curlies. There was nothing for it but to up my game and fight for real. I came out
the undefeated champion, but the victory cost me dear. I’ve been hobbling in pain ever since.

The door to my room opens and I raise myself, groaning, ready to fight again. But no guards enter this time. Instead it’s Barnes. I haven’t seen him since that day when I was first presented to the Board.

‘Come to gloat?’ I snarl, letting myself fall back into my hammock.

‘No,’ he says, taking a seat. I’m not chained up, so I could attack him, but he doesn’t look afraid. Either he’s
sure I’ll leave him be out of fear of reprisal, or he’s confident that he could draw his gun and open fire before I got my hands on him.

‘Come to take my order then? Cool. I’ll have my brains fried, sunny side up.’

Barnes grins. ‘I’ll pass your request on to Coley.’

‘Where is your trusty sidekick?’ I ask.

‘Taking it easy. Having some fun.’

‘I thought he might be cowering
behind you again.’

Barnes chuckles. ‘That wasn’t his finest moment. I haven’t brought it up with him yet, but I certainly plan to. I’m just waiting for the right time.’

‘This is all screwed,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t care what these guys are doing for you, nothing can justify this. You’ve sided with a pack of demons. Dan-Dan torments and kills children. How can you live with yourself, serving
a beast like that?’

‘I don’t have to explain my motives to the likes of you,’ Barnes grunts. ‘You killed plenty of kids yourself, I’m sure, when you turned.’