The Restless Dead: A Zombie Novel by Jenny Thomson Read Free Book Online

and a pal hooked it up so I could leech electricity from across the street.” He flips on a light switch, but the lights don’t come on. “Not like that helps us now. No electricity. But...” He heads through a doorway. “I’m used to it going off, so I’m prepared.” He reappears with a gas stove and a few cans of beans under his arm.
    Apart from Kenny, who I suspect, doesn’t have so much as a speck of dirt or blood on his glasses, the rest of us resemble extras from a bad B movie. Mustafa’s wearing the Incredible Hulk’s t-shirt: it’s ripped right down the middle, so he can be the girl in peril running from the monster while showing way too much chest. Scott looks as though he’s been attacked by a bull fleeing a slaughterhouse, whilst I look like I’ve been filming a slasher movie. I have globs of blood, guts, and brain matter in my hair.
    Soon we’re all cradling cups of tea made from water Scott boiled on the stove, and it’s so quiet we can hear a pin drop. With no power, all of the nifty gadgets we take for granted are now useless junk. If it weren’t for the fact people were turning into zombies and eating us, Greenpeace would have been pleased.
    Kenny’s bustling about his home, opening cupboards and looking under things to try and find his CB radio. None of us has the heart to tell him the battery will probably be flat, and even if it isn’t, he’s unlikely to make any contact. Does anyone even use them any more?
    Scott’s being the sensible one, planning what to do next whilst the rest of us sit in stunned silence, wishing this wasn’t real as we tuck into our meal of cold beans and crackers. Kenny has a lot of crackers; he says they last for years and don’t go stale.
    I want to close my eyes and wish all this was just one long, vivid nightmare. Archie will come over to our flat and be the big lummox hogging our couch, and Mustafa will be the guy in our local convenience store who I’d exchange a few words with every morning, whilst Kenny will be back in that time warp shop of his, nose stuck in a comic book, reading about The Walking Dead instead of trying to figure out how to survive them.
    “Well?” Mustafa nudges Kenny who’s sitting next to him. “You’re meant to be the expert. What do we do now?”
    Mustafa droning away makes me realise a conversation has been going on without me.
    My gaze rests on Kenny who’s shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose. This unconscious gesture is starting to bug me. Why couldn’t he get new specs that don’t need to be held together by sticky tape, ones that would sit properly on his nose without all that footering about?
    When Kenny speaks, his face brightens. “We kill all the dead bastards we can find and burn their bodies.”
    Mustafa puckers his lips and blows out some air. “Great plan. How do we manage that exactly? There’s only three of us.”
    Three? Fucking three? What am I, fucking invisible?
    I almost choke on my anger. My tea and cracker crumbs shoot past my lips when I shout, “Who saved your neck back there, you ungrateful bastard?” I can’t believe Scott counts this sexist pig as a pal.
    Mustafa has the sense to look apologetic, in a kicked puppy dog sort of way. “Sorry, I meant four of us,” he says, avoiding my glare because now he now knows better than to antagonize me.
    He's not counting me because I’m a girl. Yet I helped save his life. Twice.
    “I should have left you to Marie the zombie and Tam the Bam. Next time you’re on your own.”
    “I said I was sorry.”
    “Fuck you.”
    Kenny steps in. “First off, we need to contact the authorities. They should have a contingency plan for this kind of emergency. One that might involve some form of containment for the infected and a safe place for the rest of us to go. Most communications are down, so I need to find that radio. He stops to look around the room. “If I can remember where I put it. Been a while since I’ve used it. There’s too many