Zom-B Underground by Darren Shan Read Free Book Online

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.

NINE
    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