Zom-B Underground (15 page)

Please enter six-digit authorization code.

We stare at the message, then at each other.

I clear my throat. “This is where someone says that they’re a hacker and they can crack this bastard in five minutes flat.”

Nobody says a word.

“Damn,” I sigh, sinking to my haunches. “In that case I guess we just rot here and turn into rabid, brain-munching reviveds.”

Tiberius starts keying in random numbers. Every time he completes a string of six figures, the screen beeps and clears itself, prompting him to try again.

“It’s pointless,” Mark says glumly. “There’s no way you’re going to key in the exact six numbers by accident.”

“Shut up,” Tiberius snarls, staying focused on the screen. “Maybe it’s a simple code, six zeros or nines, just to stop any zombies from getting through.”

Mark makes a face but says nothing. He sits beside me and tugs at the material around the wound left by the bullet. Blood is oozing out of the hole. The smell of it tickles my nostrils, and for some reason I find myself licking my lips.

I look more closely and realize Mark’s
blood is different than mine. It’s not congealed. It doesn’t stop flowing within a couple of seconds. It’s red and pure, just like…

“What’s that smell?” Gokhan asks, crinkling his nose.

“Me,” I say too loudly, lurching to my feet and tugging at the flesh around the hole where my heart should be. “I was shot. I’m bleeding. It’ll pass in a–”

“No,” Gokhan silences me. “This is different, innit? It smells like human blood. But it can’t be. We’re alone. Where’s it coming from, eh?”

The others are sniffing the air too, even Tiberius, who isn’t looking at the screen anymore. I try to think of a way to distract them before they make the same logical leap that I have. Before I can, Peder shushes everyone.

“Quiet,” he snaps. “I can hear something.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I tell him. “You’re imagining things. It’s just–”

“Shut the hell up!” he roars, then squints suspiciously. “That noise… it’s like a drumbeat, only softer….”

It’s silent in this room. Not like anywhere else in the complex, where there was always the rumbling thunder of machinery to contend with. You wouldn’t hear a pin drop, but you can hear a lot of soft sounds that were masked in zom HQ and the corridors, especially if your ears are as sharp as ours. Noises like a gentle burp, a soft sneeze, someone’s stomach rumbling.

Or a heartbeat.

The zom heads start to turn, nostrils flaring, eyes glassy, ears cocked, locking in on the source of the smell and noise. I shuffle my feet to distract them and start to tell them again that they’re imagining things, terrified of what will happen when they figure it out.

“There!” Cathy yells, leaping across the room. I try to stop her but she bowls me aside, the excitement of the discovery lending her an extra burst of strength. Mark gapes at her as she shoves him back against the wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” he roars as she hooks her finger bones into the bandages around his chest and stomach, the fabric of his clothes, the padded vest beneath. I scramble after her but Peder grabs the back of my neck and forces me down. His eyes are bright and he’s staring fixedly at Cathy.

“Leave me alone,” Mark yelps, struggling feebly. “Get off of me, you nutcase. You’ll expose my burns.”

Cathy ignores him and keeps on ripping. Tiberius starts to close in, eyes like a shark’s, lips pulling back over his teeth, fingers opening and closing.

“Please!” Mark shrieks, starting to panic now. “The doctors said I’d fall apart if I didn’t stay wrapped up. Please, Cathy, don’t do this. Please!”

Cathy ignores him and slices through the last of the covering. Mark clutches for the bandages as they fall away and reveal his flesh. Then he catches sight of himself and stops, frowning, one step behind everybody else.

“I don’t understand,” he whispers, poking at his stomach with a gloved finger. His skin is pale from being under wraps for so long, but there are no burn marks. His flesh is pure.

“Your gloves,” Peder says in a choked voice, pushing himself off me, transfixed by the sight of Mark’s flesh. “Take them off.”

Mark frowns, then tugs at the glove covering his left hand. It doesn’t detach. As he continues pulling at it, Cathy loses patience, takes hold and rips it away. Mark shouts with pain, then stares with shock. There are bits of metal attached to the ends of his fingers.

“What’s happening?” Mark croaks. “I don’t understand.”

But this time it’s a lie. The tumblers have clicked for him at last. Even without the exposed flesh, the fake finger bones, the rise and fall of his stomach as he breathes, the soft sound of his heart as it beats, he could tell by the fixed, frenzied looks in the eyes of the zom heads around him.

“Mark’s alive,” Cathy whispers.

Then licks her lips.

Hungry.

“No,” Mark wheezes. “This can’t be right. I’m a zom head. I was attacked. I was killed. There’s been a mistake.”

The zombies–and that’s what they are now, all human semblance discarded–don’t reply. They’re shuffling closer, eyes steady, ready to feed.

“Get back,” I snarl, leaping to my feet and pushing Cathy away. I step between Mark and the others. “You’re not going to do this. I’m hungry too. I can smell him just like you can, and it’s driving me wild. But I won’t harm him and I won’t let you lot either. You have to control yourselves. This is
Mark
.”

“Worm,”
Cathy gurgles, grinning crookedly. “Wriggle, little worm.”

“No!” I roar, slamming my hands together, trying to startle them back to their senses. “Stop. Think. Don’t give in to the hunger. Peder. Gokhan. Tiberius.” I turn pleadingly to the ginger-haired teenager. “You stood by my side. You fought for my life. Do the same for Mark. You have to. He’s one of us.” A memory clicks in.
“We accept him! Gooble gobble!”

Tiberius pauses and his eyes clear slightly.

“It must have been an experiment,” I babble. “They wanted to see if they could hide a human among us. They told him he was a zombie. They covered him up so that we couldn’t smell him, hear his heartbeat or see him breathing. They must have given him drugs to keep his eyes open, dry out his mouth, stop him from sweating, make him look like he was a revitalized.”

“But he’s not,” Peder growls. “He’s human.”

“I didn’t know,” Mark wails. “I thought… they told me… I never even guessed! B, you’ve got to stop them. Don’t let them eat me. Please, B, I want to live, I don’t want to–”

“Shh. I’m trying.” I concentrate on Tiberius, hoping that if I can reach him, he can help me get through to the rest of them. “All right, he’s not a proper zom head, but he’s still one of us. He’s been living alongside you guys for months. You can’t turn on him as if he doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“Worm,”
Cathy leers again, reaching out for the trembling boy.

I slap her hands away. “I know you don’t respect him, you bully him, you treat him like a worm. But he’s still part of the gang. You
won’t attack one of your own. You’re not monsters. It’s the hunger. You have to fight it. You–”

Gokhan smashes a fist into my jaw and I stagger sideways. Mark shrieks and the sound excites them. They press forward. Before they can target him, I’m back between them, punching and kicking, screaming abusively. I’m not going to accept this. I let Tyler Bayor die. I won’t let it happen to Mark too.

“Stop!” I yell. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Peder grabs the neck of my T-shirt and pulls me in close. His eyes flash as he grins at me. “Yes we do,” he hisses.

“Tiberius!” I bellow. “Help me! We have to fight together! You have to–”

Tiberius puts a finger to my lips and says, “Hush now.” Then he grabs me from Peder and throws me aside.

Mark screams. “No! God! Help!”

But not even God can help him now.

The zombies fall on the boy. They dig their fingers into his skull and tear it open. Ram claws into his brain and scoop it out. They ignore his screams, his whimpers, his pleas, the feeble thrashing of his arms and legs.

And all I can do as the beasts feast and Mark dies wretchedly before my eyes, calling my name, begging for mercy, is beat the floor uselessly with my fists and howl insanely at the cruel injustices of this monstrous, twisted world.

“What have you done?”

I’m backed up against the wall close to the sealed door. My finger bones are digging into the concrete, tearing at the plaster. I stare with shock and disgust at the zom heads as they squat close to Mark’s remains, licking their fingers clean, dipping them back inside his emptied skull in search of any last tidbits. They look happy, sated,
full
. They pay no attention to me. Like junkies after a fix. Spaced out. In a world of their own. A world of murder, cannibalism and sweet, sweet brains.

“Oh, God, what have you sick bastards
done
?” I moan, shaking my head, trying to close my eyes to the nightmare, praying for tears that will never come.

Tiberius glances at me and frowns. He
gazes at Mark, then at his fingers. For a moment he looks like himself and he cringes. A look of regret and terror flickers across his face. Then his jaw tightens and I see him turn away from remorse. He gives himself over to the pleasure of the feed and zones out again.

Cathy is giggling. She pokes out one of Mark’s eyes, the way I poked out Dr. Cerveris’s earlier, and plays with it. She puts it in her mouth, sucks on it a while, then spits it up into the air and tries to catch it with her tongue as it drops. She misses. It hits her chin and bounces away. She giggles again.

Peder and Gokhan are still fishing for scraps of brain. Gokhan is muttering, “Innit. Innit. Innit.” Peder nudges him aside, crouches over Mark like a dog and sticks his face into the cavity of the dead boy’s head to lick out any last morsels.

“You’re monsters,” I sob. But they’re not really. They’re just hungry creatures who fed when prey was presented to them. I identify with the zom heads too closely to condemn them completely. I had to fight hard not to turn on Mark. If it had been five minutes later, or ten or thirty or however long I have left before my senses crumble, I would have joined in.

I could be harsh and say that they haven’t regressed, they’re still revitalizeds, they had a choice. But who am I to judge? I was able to fight temptation because I can naturally hold out longer or because I ate slightly more of Dr. Cerveris’s brain than they did. Maybe they weren’t able to resist the way I was.

Either way, I’m sure they’ll feel guilty later, once the feeding frenzy passes and they recover their wits. They’ll probably spend the rest of their conscious days regretting the way they gave in to their base instincts. That won’t do poor Mark any good, but at least they’ll suffer. I think they’ll probably envy me once I lose my grip and regress. The only way they’re ever going to escape the awful memory of their crime is by shedding their humanity entirely and becoming dumb reviveds again.

As I pause between moans, I hear a noise in one of the corridors. Footsteps. I tear my gaze away from the vile spectacle and watch sluggishly as Josh Massoglia enters the room, a small team of soldiers spreading out to flank him.

Two of the soldiers are carrying flamethrowers.

The zom heads pay no attention to the soldiers. Mark’s brain was enough for them. They don’t need any more at the moment. They don’t even react when the pair with flamethrowers takes aim.

“Wait,” Josh says. He’s staring at me. My fingers are still scratching the wall. My head is shaking softly.

Josh crosses the room and stops in front of me. He looks at my fingers, my lips, then into my eyes. His right hand comes up slowly and stretches out towards the calculator on the screen. He keys in six numbers and it makes a beeping sound.

The door slides open.

Josh steps away from me and lowers his hand. He doesn’t say anything. My fingers fall still. My head turns towards the open
door. Bewildered, I look to Josh for confirmation, but he doesn’t give me any signs.

I peel myself away from the wall and stumble through the doorway, into a corridor that rises like the one I was in before. I feel as if I’m in a dream, but I can’t be. The dead don’t sleep, so the dead can’t dream.

The door starts to slide shut behind me. I step to the side, looking for Josh one last time, searching for answers. But all I see is a sudden blossoming of red and yellow flames.

There are agonized screams, the voices of four teenagers blending into one as the zom heads pay the ultimate price for turning on Mark. The stench of burning flesh, flames consuming all, both the monsters and their victim.

Then the door clicks shut and there’s nothing.

Only me.

My cheeks are dry but I wipe a hand across them anyway, brushing away nonexistent tears. Then I turn and stagger up the corridor. I expect it to twist back on itself like the other one did, but this just keeps rising until it levels out into a tiny room. There’s a plain wooden door in one of the walls, no scanners, locks or anything. I can smell the outside world, a rich, pungent, overwhelming scent after the clinical, carefully maintained atmosphere of the complex.