World War Moo by Michael Logan Read Free Book Online

that the state of being a zombie is about the loss of humanity and individual thought, about being driven by a simple desire to infect others. Both of these definitions disqualify beings with this virus, since they appear to be capable of relatively normal behavior when there aren’t any victims around.”
    He sat back, confident he’d kick-started a long debate on the relative merits of the terms, thus sucking the others into his geeky world and improving his chances of having it off with Jelena.
    â€œThat which we call a shit, by any other name would stink as bad,” said one of the older boys who’d been playing water polo earlier. “That’s Shakespeare. Well, an approximation of Shakespeare. We’re studying him in English lit. It’s irrelevant what you call them. They still want to kill us all.”
    Everyone nodded in agreement. Geldof pretended to vigorously scratch either side of his nose with his index and middle finger. He was really giving the smartarse boy a two-fingered salute, which was not as well known internationally as the single-digit insult. The response, irritatingly delivered in perfect English, had derailed his plan.
    â€œNever mind what to call them,” Jelena said. “Tell us what happened.”
    And so Geldof began talking about what it was like to live through a zombie animal apocalypse. At first, it felt good to tell his story: the craziness of the early days, the evacuations, the encroaching animals, and the constant bickering between his mum, Fanny, and their meat-obsessed neighbor, David. Others, boys and girls alike, arranged themselves nearby and leaned over to listen. They laughed out loud when he described getting his hands stuck in the side of an infected cow during the abortive cow-tipping episode. He’d never had so many people intent on his every word. When somebody handed him another beer and rakija , he took them, fearful of breaking the spell cast by the sparks floating up from the crackling fire, the yawning vastness of the starry sky above, and the convivial company he’d so sorely lacked. The liquor burned his gullet when it went down; his novice spluttering was greeted with encouraging thumps on the back.
    It all began to go sour when, inevitably, he got to where people began to die. His head already swimming, he snagged a third beer as he laid out how his mum met her end at the very snouts of the snuffling, ravenous pigs she’d refused to eat. He glanced at the pig as he spoke, convinced it had winked at him. By the time he narrated how Brown shot his dad in the Channel Tunnel as they fled, he’d sloshed down another two beers. His words were now slurred, his voice a flat monotone. There was no more laughter; of his audience only Jelena remained and she was casting glances around, looking for some way to escape this torrent of pain. Geldof knew he was losing her, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. For all those months, he’d had to internalize his grief. David’s wife, Mary, still living with Geldof after their escape, was coping with the loss of her husband and twin sons by refusing to talk about it; Lesley and Terry were on the other side of the Atlantic getting on with their lives; even Nadeem, the only surviving member of Maths Club, shied away from Geldof’s attempts to express how he felt on their Skype chats.
    Finally, near spent, he tried to catch Jelena’s eye: a task made impossible by his swaying, double vision and her fixed stare at the ground.
    â€œYou’d think the worst thing would be that I got my dad’s brains on my face,” he said, slapping his cheek and running his fingers down to illustrate. “Right in the face. But it wasn’t. At least I had a chance to talk to him, you know? To rebuild our relationship a bit. But my mum. My infuriating, hectoring mum. I was such a little shit to her. I never got a chance to tell her I loved her. I’d give