Doomware by Nathan Kuzack Read Free Book Online Page A

and cutlery, chairs spaced perfectly around it, the perfection of the whole thing destroyed only by one thing: one of the chairs had been overturned. For some reason, the sight of this bothered him, causing him to stare at the chair for a long while, studying it closely as if it were a coded message he’d been tasked with decrypting. Eventually, he righted the chair and placed in its proper position beside the others, stepping back to admire his handiwork. Only then did he realise why it had bothered him: it had spoken more eloquently of unexplained disaster than the sight of a mouldering cadaver. Without making a sound, he returned the chair to its original position on the floor. He didn’t venture beyond the ground floor; the reek of death was wafting down the stairs.
    Back on the street he skirted the area of a melting corpse and took a left onto Elm Road. He couldn’t remember if he’d been in this direction before and thought about checking the A to Z , but the rain put him off. He’d look at it under cover somewhere if he needed to. He ignored the tree-lined side streets (except to see if they were free of zombies) and kept walking straight on.
    On the next corner, where Elm Road became Richmond Road, there was an old house. Four storeys high, cylindrical in shape and made of granitic stone, it was completely separate from its terraced surroundings, and stood out like a grand old lighthouse perched in the middle of a hostile sea. He was drawn to the place immediately, and gaining entry was easy: each pane of glass on the front door shattered at first blow, allowing him to reach in and undo the locks.
    He entered the hallway. Dark wooden floorboards – or something that looked and sounded exactly like wood, possibly morpher-made – stretched off in all directions, up a curving staircase with a beautifully carved balustrade, and into the adjoining rooms.
    He explored. The place was dingy but plush, dusty but immaculately tidy. He liked the house at once, not least because he knew it would prove to be a treasure trove: there were old things everywhere. Really old. He had to look twice at some of them before he could work out what they were, and others he could only hazard a guess at. He wondered what kind of people had lived here. The old-fashioned photographs dotted here and there gave no clue, mostly showing sepia-toned images of people of an age that meant they were sure to be long dead. Whoever the owners of house had been, they had certainly been lovers of bygone times. And there was no doubt they had been rich. There was a huge amount of food in the kitchen. Food in tin cans. Food in glass jars. Food in foil packets. Frozen food in an old-style chest freezer. Bottles of wine in a wooden rack. Some of the provisions had spoiled, but even the usable stuff was still way too much for him to carry in one go. He looked around for an micromorpher, but there wasn’t one. Who on earth lived without a morpher? That really was taking a penchant for the past too far. Still, he gave a silent thank you to the owners, whoever they were, offering up a simultaneous prayer that he wouldn’t have to meet their zombified arses.
    After quickly checking all four floors and their rabbit warren of rooms, he was satisfied there were no bodies. They must have been away when it had happened. He thanked them again.
    In the first-floor drawing room a grandfather clock ticked away loudly. A closer look revealed it had a power supply; it was a modern piece of equipment designed to look old. Nearby, a huge bookcase held row after row of books. He’d always been a keen reader, subconsciously trying to accomplish the impossible feat of cramming his head with the library of books other people carried around in their cybernetic brains, and the trait had been given free rein over the past six months. He scanned the titles with interest. They were mostly classics, and he selected a few he couldn’t recall reading, at least not for a long while: