Zom-B Underground Read Online Free PDF

scattered across the floor. There’s a blur. The rifle kicks in the soldier’s hand. The camera goes out of focus for a few seconds. When it steadies again, I find myself looking at a kid whose head has been blown apart. Hard to tell if it was a boy or a girl. It’s just scraps of meat now.
    The soldier pushes on, then pauses. He focuses on a number of bodies to his left. I thought they were all corpses, but someone’s moving in among the dead. The soldier takes a few steps forward, stops and adjusts the camera. It zooms in on the face of a zombie hunched over the remains of a dead boy.
    The zombie has cut the boy’s head open and is digging out bits of his brain, spooning them into its mouth with its bone-distortedfingers. It looks like a drug addict on a happy high. The boy’s arms are still shaking—he must be alive, at least technically. The zombie doesn’t care. It goes on munching, ignorant of the trembling arms, the soldiers, everything except the slivers of brain.
    The zombie is a girl.
    The zombie is
me
.
    “We don’t know how many you killed that day,” Josh says softly, “but by the variety of flesh and blood we picked out of your mouth when we were hosing you down later, we’re pretty sure that boy wasn’t the first.”
    “We can never release you, Becky,” Dr. Cerveris says with just a hint of gloomy satisfaction. “You’re a monster.”
    I don’t respond. I can’t. All I can do is keep my eyes pinned on the girl–the
monster
–on the screen. And stare.



SIX
    Reilly leads me out of the cell. I’ve gotten so used to the cramped room over the last few weeks that I feel strange at first, almost afraid. The corridor outside isn’t huge, but it feels like I’m walking down the middle of a motorway.
    Four soldiers trail us, rifles at the ready. They’re mean-looking sons of bitches. I think they’d love an excuse to let rip. I keep my hands tight by my sides, head down, mincing along like a lamb.
    Reilly wanted to let me out several days ago, not long after my meeting with Dr. Cerveris and Josh. He was stunned when I asked if I could stay in the cell a while longer. After what I’d seen on the TV, I needed some time by myself. I felt dirty and twisted, not fit to mix with anybody else, even zombies.
    I spent the last few days lying on my bed or squatting in a corner, fixating on what I’d seen, the way I’d feasted. It shouldn’t have come as a shock–I know what I am and what zombies do–but it did. I’d imagined what I thought was the worst, lots of times, but nothing could have prepared me for the cold, hard reality of that film footage.
    I could have tried to wipe the memory from my thoughts, turned my back on it and pretended I’d never seen the macabre film. But I remember something my teacher Mr. Burke once said. “There are lots of black-hearted, mean-spirited bastards in the world. It’s important that we hold them to account. But always remember that
you
might be the most black-hearted and mean-spirited of the lot, so hold yourself the most accountable of all.”
    After throwing Tyler to the zombies, I vowed that I’d change, that I’d spend the rest of my life trying to make up for what I’d done. But I can’t do that if I don’t accept the truth about myself. I’m a vicious, cannibalistic killer. I’ve done plenty to be ashamed of, and I owe it to my victims to face that shame and live with it, to never forget them or what I did.
    After a lot of thinking, I came to terms with my guilt and… No, that’s not right. I wasn’t comfortable with what I’d done, and I hope I never will be. But I found a place within myself to house the horror, somewhere close to the surface but not so close that it would get in the way of everything else. Once I’d done that, I figured I was ready to face the world again. So when Reilly offered a second time to take me to see the revitalizeds, I agreed to tag along.
    We wind through a series of corridors. They all look the same,