Zom-B City Read Online Free PDF

nodding at Tag and Essex. In a daze they follow Coley to the vehicle and get in. Coley fires up the engine and revs it angrily. For a moment I think he plans to mow down the American. But Barnes never gives any indication that he’s worried. And although the car rumbles forward a metre or so, Coley doesn’t push things any further.
    ‘You’ve had a lucky escape today,’ Barnes says.
    ‘Yes,’ I gulp. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘In this city, you’d better hope you stay lucky,’ he mutters, then backs up, keeping his rifle trained on me the whole way, until he gets into the car. As soon as the door slams shut, the car squeals past. The last thing I see of the hunters is an angry-looking Coley giving me the finger.
    Then the car turns a corner and is gone, leaving me lying alone in the road, still trembling at my narrow escape.

EIGHT
    I drag myself through the streets, limping, bruised, the flesh torn to shreds on my elbows and at the back of my head. I don’t think any bones are broken, though I can’t be certain. The pain isn’t as bad as it would be if I was alive, but it’s pretty damn excruciating.
    I recall the look of hatred in Coley’s eyes as I stumble along. Oddly enough, I don’t blame him for wanting to kill me. I probably had that same look when I first saw a zombie. We’re monsters, plain and simple. The dead can, by definition, have no automatic right to life.
    I make slower progress than before, hampered by my injuries. It’s dusk before I turn into the street where I used to live. Some of the keener or hungrier zombies have already come out of hiding and are on patrol. A few stop and sniff me as I pass, losing interest when they realise I’m more like them than one of the living.
    Finally I come to the block of flats where I grew up. I can see from here that our front door is open. We have electricity in this area but no lights are on inside. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home. Which is a good thing. My greatest fear as I drew closer was that I’d find Mum, eyes glassed over, human flesh stuck between her teeth, lost to me forever in a state worse than death. (I’m not so worried about Dad, as I’m pretty certain he made it out alive. He has the luck of the devil.) I’m not sure what I’d do if I found her and she was a zombie. I’d want to kill her, to end her suffering, but I don’t think that I could.
    I spot a few familiar faces on the street, neighbours from a past that seems a thousand years removed. Nobody that I really cared about though. Ignoring them, I crawl up the three flights of stairs – as I pass a giant arse which was spray-painted on the wall, I slap it for luck and grin fleetingly at the memory of happier times – and limp along the landing, then step inside what used to be my home and shut the door on the outside world.
    The flat smells musty. The heating hasn’t been turned on for months and none of the windows are open. Most of the doors are closed – a habit of Mum’s, she couldn’t bear an open door – so the rooms are stuffy.
    I do a tour of the flat, making sure I’m alone. No bloodstains anywhere, which is a promising sign. No zombies lying in any dark corners either, which is even better. Maybe Mum made it out after all. Perhaps Dad came for her after I split from him at school, took her somewhere safe. They could be living the high life on some paradise island now.
    ‘Yeah,’ I sneer at myself. ‘Dream on!’
    I get a pang in my chest where my heart should be when I look into their bedroom. Some of Mum’s clothes are laid across the bed, three different sets. She was obviously choosing what to wear that night when the world went to hell. I can picture her standing here, staring at the clothes, trying to decide. Then . . .
    What? Killed by a zombie? Turned into one of the living dead? Taken off to some mystical Shangri-La by her racist, wife-beating knight in shining armour?
    I don’t know. All I know for sure is that she never made a final choice.