Zom-B City Read Online Free PDF Page B

The clothes stayed here, strewn across the bed, never to be worn again.
    ‘I miss you, Mum,’ I moan and wait for tears to come. But of course they don’t. They can’t. So in the end I close the door and go to check my own room.
    It looks smaller than I remembered, dark and poky. I turn on the light, but that just makes it seem even more claustrophobic, full of ominous shadows. I gaze round. My bed looks the same as it always did, crumpled black sheets, the indent of my head on the pillow. No bookshelves or posters. I didn’t believe in cluttering up my room. I liked my space, me.
    I spot my iPod lying on the table next to my bed. I pick it up and smile softly. I left it charging the morning I set off to school for the last time, so it’s warm to the touch. I scroll through a couple of my playlists, select a song at random and stick my headphones on. I yelp and immediately turn down the volume. It’s easy to forget how good my sense of hearing is. Back then I used to set the volume up almost to maximum. If I did that now, I’d deafen myself.
    I let the song play to its end, then lay down the iPod and step out of the room. I’d been looking forward to settling in here again, lying on my old bed and staring at the patch of ceiling which I knew so well. But now that I’ve seen it, I’ve gone off the idea. Instead I head back to Mum and Dad’s room, sweep the clothes from the bed (I never was overly sentimental), lie back and cross my legs.
    ‘Night night,’ I murmur after a few minutes, then turn on my side. I can’t sleep, not since I was killed, but there’s no harm in pretending every once in a while, is there?

NINE
    I spend several days in the flat, maybe even a couple of weeks. Hard to tell for sure — one monotonous day blends into another and I lose track after a while. I only leave three times, to feed. On each occasion, being new to the whole brain-eating game, I track other zombies. They shuffle around the streets, sniffing like pigs in search of truffles. Often they go for hours without finding anything, but in the end they usually manage to track down an old corpse with some scraps of brain still left in its head.
    I expected the zombies to fight over the meagre morsels, but they feed politely, taking turns, waiting patiently while others gorge themselves. Sometimes they get a bit overeager and try to butt in, but always pull back if the feasting creature growls warningly at them.
    I hate having to feed on the dried-up, rubbery bits of brain, but it’s eat or lose my mental faculties completely. I keep looking for animals, but I still haven’t seen any, apart from the birds and rats. I’ve eaten the brains of a few dead crows and rodents, and even caught a live rat once — I think it must have been sick or lame, because it couldn’t run very fast. But they haven’t made any real difference. Too small. I’d need to tuck into a dog or cat’s brain to find out if it could do the job that a human’s does for me.
    The rest of the time I hole up in the flat, recovering. My wounds don’t heal, but the dull ache fades from my bones and my thick, jelly-like blood combines with the green moss to form thin, wispy scabs around the scrapes. After a few days, I’m good as new (well, as close to it as a zombie can ever be), but I make no move to leave. I can’t think of anywhere better to go.
    I turned on the lights the first night, when I got tired of lying on the bed, but they attracted curious zombies, so I’ve sat in the dark since then. A few zombies wander in every so often – I’ve left the front door open, since one of them nearly broke it down when it heard someone at home and couldn’t get in – but they slip out once they’ve satisfied themselves that my brain’s of no use to them.
    I check the TV every day but it produces nothing but static. The radio, on the other hand, is still going strong. I never used to listen to the radio – so twentieth century! – but Mum always had it