Zom-B Underground (6 page)

“Hey, Rage, have you heard about this?” Tiberius yells and makes me repeat my story.

“Anybody else see hooded mutants?” Rage asks the rest of the zom heads once I’m done. Everyone’s staring at me, having stopped whatever they were doing to listen.

“I didn’t see any mutants,” Peder says, “but one of the exit doors at my school was locked. I was furious. I’d gone through hell to make it that far. I kept kicking and punching it until the zombies swarmed me.” He rubs his upper right arm, where a deep cut runs from the shoulder down to his elbow.

“It’s something we wondered about before,” Danny says. “How did the zombies get inside the buildings in the first place? Why were there so many of them? Where did they come from? Some of us think we might have been victims of a conspiracy.”

“Terrorists,” Cathy whispers.

“Get real,” I laugh. “You can’t think this was a terrorist attack. What, they got sick of bombs and guns, decided to use zombies instead?”

“Chemical warfare,” Cathy says seriously. “It’s something that terrorists have been exploring for years. Maybe they found a way to reanimate the dead. I mean, unless it’s some sort of freak disease,
somebody
must have set those undead bastards loose on us.”

“It could have been aliens,” Mark suggests.

Tiberius nods enthusiastically. “That’s my vote.”

“That’s why you’re a pair of airheads,” Rage jeers. “Aliens! Cathy’s right. It was probably cooked up by mad scientists. Whether they were working for foreign powers or not, I don’t know. I think it might have been our own guys, that it got leaked accidentally.”

“If that was the case, they wouldn’t have just struck at the schools,” Cathy argues.

“They didn’t,” Rage responds. “I was in a shopping mall. I heard that there had been attacks at hospitals, airports, all sorts of places.”

“Yeah,
attacks
,” Cathy presses. “If it was an accidental breakout, it would have spread from one spot and rippled outwards. But they struck all over London at the same time. Explain that, if it wasn’t planned.”

There’s a troubled silence. I’m disappointed that nobody seems to know any more than I do. I was hoping to find answers, but the zom heads are victims like me, ignorant of what really happened.

“Anybody know if the zombies are still running wild out there?” I ask.

“They don’t tell us stuff like that,” Peder says. “They don’t even tell the teacher’s pet what’s going on outside, do they, Rage?”

“Bite me,” Rage barks, and the others laugh.

“Why’s he their pet?” I ask.

“He sucks up to them,” Tiberius smirks.

“It’s all,
Yes, Mr. Reilly, sir!
and,
No, Mr. Reilly, sir!
” Danny jeers.

“
Can I help you with anything, Dr. Cerveris?
” Gokhan adds.
“Do you want me to bend over, so you can stick your needle up my–”

“One more word, eunuch boy, and it’ll be your last for a while,” Rage says softly, and the teasing stops instantly. He glares around and everyone drops their gaze. Except me.

“Something you want to say?” he growls.

“Yeah,” I answer calmly. “Why’d you call him eunuch boy?”

Rage relaxes. “He’s Turkish. Half of that lot are eunuchs.”

“Hey!” Gokhan objects. “That’s racist, innit?”

“Not if it’s true,” I smirk, and the others laugh. I grin for a moment. Then I recall Tyler and my vow to put my crude ways behind me, and my face drops. Looks like I’ll have to try harder in the future. Old habits die hard.

“So nobody knows anything,” I mutter. “We don’t know how zombies came to be, why they attacked when they did, how they struck in so many different places at once, or what the upshot of it was. The undead might have all been killed or captured, or maybe they’re still on the loose and this is the last place on earth where the living can walk around safely.”

“It’s not,” Danny says confidently. “I overheard Reilly talking with one of the other soldiers. He was telling him to shape up or they’d ship him out to a different unit, one that wasn’t as tightly secured as this place.”

“Well done,” Cathy says scathingly.

“What?” Danny whines.

She nods at the mirror. “You know that they’re listening. You’ve just gone and dropped Reilly in it.”

“Well, he’s one of them,” Danny sniffs. “I don’t care what happens to him, just like he doesn’t really care about any of us.”

“Reilly’s all right,” Peder says.

“Yeah,” Danny agrees, “but at the end of the day he’s just doing his job. He treats us decently because he’s told to. If they told him to put us down, you think he wouldn’t?”

There’s another long, uneasy silence.

“I thought you guys were better off than me,” I say softly. “But you’re not, are you? You’re prisoners, just like I am.”

“Yeah,” Mark says when nobody else replies. “But it’s not all bad. We could be reviveds. They keep them in huge holding cells, packed in tight together, none of the comforts that they treat us to. And they experiment on them. We don’t have to deal with any of that.”

“No?” Cathy laughs cruelly. “You’re even dumber than I thought, Worm.” She points at the mirror again. “What do you think all this is? We’re guinea pigs, just like the reviveds. And when Dr. Cerveris and his crew have learned all that they can, we’ll be discarded as casually as the others are.”

We all stare at the mirror and wonder who’s on the other side and what they might be thinking. Then we drift apart and everyone goes to their own part of the room to brood. Some of them shoot me dirty looks every so often, blaming me for reminding them that at the end of the day we’re just fancily treated prisoners, at the mercy of those who have absolutely no human reason to show us any.

Reilly takes us back to our cells one at a time and leaves us there for what must be night. That develops into a routine. He escorts us to zom HQ (as we call it) every day, lets us mix for several hours, then returns us to our cells. We always go with him individually. Nobody ever gets to see where the other zom heads are housed. We could all be quartered in the same corridor, or in completely different parts of the complex—we’ve no idea.

They could leave us with each other the whole time–like me, the others don’t need to sleep–but Tiberius thinks they’re trying to institutionalize us, to make us easier to control.

I try to discuss the attacks and the outside situation again, but nobody wants to
talk about that. They’ve been through it all before and are reluctant to rehash old arguments. It doesn’t matter that all of the theories are fresh to me. They’ve been together for months now, and even though they’re not tight like real friends, they share a bond that I’m not yet a true part of. They’re not going to break their rules just to please the new zom head on the block.

Even Mark, the friendliest of the lot, gets prickly when I push him.

“Just leave it, B,” he mutters. “What’s the point? We can’t do anything about it. If they want to tell us, they will. If they don’t, they won’t, and all the guessing in the world won’t get us any closer to the truth.”

Mark’s the runt of the litter. The others tease him and pick on him, even Cathy. They call him Worm and mock him for not being allowed to join the zom heads when they experiment on reviveds. Mark takes it as best he can, laughs along with them, only occasionally grimaces when they go too far.

Danny tested me on my second day in zom HQ. Tossed a casual insult my way to see how I’d react.

“Say that again and you’ll be picking the remains of your teeth out of your mouth,” I told him, ready to back up the words with action if pushed. But Danny’s no fool. He saw that I was serious and judged me a genuine threat, even though I’m a girl and he’s bigger than me. Nobody’s given me grief since then.

Rage is the undisputed leader of the pack. He’s a big old bruiser–easy to see how he got his nickname–but clever too, reads a lot, excels at the more difficult video games, knows about all sorts of things. Reminds me a bit of my dad, a bully but sharp. It’s hard to get the better of people like that. You can’t beat them up and you can’t outsmart them. Rage doesn’t seem to be as violent as my dad, but he’s not somebody you provoke lightly because there’s always the chance that he’ll snap and smash you up.

Having said that, he acts like a toad whenever any of the scientists or soldiers come to see us. I thought the others were exaggerating when they were winding him up that first day, but I soon see that they’re not. He’s like a fanboy when Josh or his team is on the scene.

Dr. Cerveris came this morning to run some routine tests on us, eyes, ears, that sort of thing. We get tested regularly, usually by nurses or low-level doctors. But today we were treated to a visit by the high and mighty one himself.

“Hey, Dr. Cerveris, how you been?” Rage beamed, running over to him like an eager puppy.

“Very well, thank you,” the doctor replied, then asked Rage how things were going. Once they’d dispensed with the small talk, Rage barked at the rest of us and ordered us to line up. He walked down the line with Dr. Cerveris, glaring at us, making sure nobody said anything untoward or threatened the doctor in any way.

“Are those okay?” Rage asked when Dr. Cerveris came to the Turk and paused to study his painted finger bones.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “I was just curious to see what he had drawn.” He smiled at Gokhan. “You have an artistic eye.”

“Art’s my favorite subject, innit?” Gokhan replied.

“We’ll have to give you oils and canvas, to see if your skills have been affected by your altered circumstances.”

“I dunno about that,” Gokhan pouted. “I’m not really into proper painting.”

“You’ll do whatever the hell the doctor tells you to do!” Rage roared, and shoved Gokhan in the chest.

Gokhan squared up to Rage and it looked like things were going to kick off, but Dr. Cerveris coughed politely and said, “Please, boys, no fighting.”

I think Gokhan would have ignored him, but as soon as the doctor called for peace, Rage took a step back and muttered an apology.

“Why do you suck up to them so much?” I asked once Dr. Cerveris had left. I thought Rage would prickle at that but he only shrugged.

“They’re the new masters now. If we’re to have any hope of getting out of this place, we need to play ball. Besides, they’ve taken good care of us. We should be thankful. They could have left us to rot with the zombies. They’re doing their best to look after us and make our lives easier. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

I haven’t seen much of the complex yet. Reilly never varies the route when he leads me to or from my cell. The others haven’t seen much more of it either, though they’ve been to the places where the reviveds are housed.

According to Mark, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of zombies locked up in the pens. He thinks they’re being held for experimental purposes. This is a giant laboratory, not a prison.

The reviveds are a mix of adults and children. But nobody’s seen any grown-up zom heads. We’ve been segregated by age for some reason. There must be adult revitalizeds, conscious as we are, but they’re either being held in a separate part of the complex or in a different building. I don’t know why they’d want to divide us this way. Maybe they’re worried that we’d start a big zom head family if they let us mix together freely.

There’s no doubt that I’m an outsider–nothing personal, I’m sure it’s purely because I’m new to the fold–but I was getting along all right with most of the zom heads until a couple of days ago. Cathy was the only one who actively disliked me. She wouldn’t talk to me unless it was to say something critical. Then we had
hairgate
and I’ve been snubbed by the rest of them ever since.

I’d just finished filing down my teeth and was studying myself in the mirror. I ran a hand over the stubble on my head and muttered, “I hope this grows back soon. I fancy a change of style.”

Cathy laughed hysterically. “Did you hear what dopey B said?” she cawed to the others.

“What’s so funny about that?” I growled.

“You think your hair will grow back.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t…?” I stopped and groaned as I caught on.

“You’re dead, dumbo,” Cathy sneered. “Your hair won’t ever grow again. You’re stuck with that G.I. Jane look for life.”

She kept on mocking me until I lost my cool. With a bellow, I rushed her, grabbed her ponytail and dragged her down onto the floor. She squealed and slapped at my hands but I was too strong for her. The others crowded round, egging us on.

“They don’t let us have knives in here,” I said, “but these bones sticking out of my fingers are every bit as good. If they can cut through skulls, hair shouldn’t be much of a problem. I’m going to shave you even balder than I am, bitch.”

“No!” Cathy screamed as I started hacking at her hair. “Don’t, B, please!”

I ignored her and severed her ponytail. As it came free, I held it up in the air and whooped.

“Now for the rest of it,” I jeered, waving my hand in front of her eyes, letting her see what I’d already cut away.

The fight drained from her when she saw her hair, and she started making loud moaning noises, the closest she could get to crying. I paused uneasily and watched her shaking. She reached out, took the hair from my fingers, clutched it to her chest and wailed, a dry, choking, wretched sound.

“Nice going,” Tiberius snarled. “That won’t grow back. She can never replace it.”

“You didn’t do much to stop me,” I challenged him, and glared defiantly at the others, who were all looking a tad too self-righteous for my liking. “You just stood there, cheering.”

“Yeah,” Danny snorted. “That’s right. Blame us.
You
cut off her hair, but
we’re
the guilty ones.”

“It’s not that bad,” I muttered. “I didn’t scalp her.”

They only stared at me with contempt until I turned my back on them and stomped away. Then they all crouched around Cathy and sympathized with her, conveniently forgetting the fact that she was the one who started the fight.

So much for my
friends
. Hypocritical jerks! I think I prefer being in my cell on my own.