Zom-B Underground (Zom-B #2)

I'm in a small room, not much bigger than my cell. Sitting at a desk, arms cuffed behind my back, legs shackled to my chair. Still wearing the leathers. Staring at the table, jaw slack, thinking back to what happened with the zombies, the way I snapped. Wincing at the memory of the man's burning head, driving my spear through his brain, helping kill him.

Burke and Josh are sitting across from me, waiting, saying nothing. I listen to the hum and crackle of the building. I like it here, away from the zom heads, zombies, all that crap. I'd be happy if they never took me back.

The door opens and Dr. Cerveris steps in. He's seething. Glares at me as if I've insulted his mother. Sits with Burke and Josh on the other side of the table.

"Is she secure?" he snaps.

"Yes," Josh says.

"You're certain?"

"We don't take chances."

Dr. Cerveris sneers at me. "You're a very silly girl."

"Get stuffed," I snort, and he quivers indignantly. Before he can retort, I lock gazes with Burke. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I'm a consultant," he says in a deadpan voice.

I laugh at the sheer absurdity of it. "What happened to being a teacher?"

He smiles thinly. "There isn't much call for teachers these days. Education has slipped down the list of priorities. That's what happens when you find yourself caught in the middle of a war with the living dead."

"Careful," Josh says warningly. "Don't forget the restrictions we discussed."

"Don't worry," Burke sighs. "I won't give away any of your precious secrets, though I don't see what you gain by withholding information from her." He runs a hand through his hair. It's grayer than it was six months ago. His eyes are bloodshot, dark bags underneath. He stinks of coffee.

"What was that about in there?" Burke asks me. "Why did you flip?"

"If you'd ever stuck a spear through someone's head, maybe you'd understand," I mutter.

"It didn't bother the others," Burke says.

"Well, it should," I snarl. "We were burning and hacking up people. When the hell did that become acceptable?"

"I told you before you went in," Josh growls. "They're not people. They're monsters."

"No, we're the monsters. They can't help themselves. We can." I face Burke again. "You remember Tyler Bayor?"

He has to think for a moment. "Tyler. Yes. He didn't make it."

"That's because I threw him to the zombies."

Burke raises an eyebrow and I quickly tell him about my dad coming to rescue me, yelling at me to throw Tyler to the undead when we needed to stall them, the way I obeyed.

"You tried to warn me," I finish sullenly. "You told me I was in danger of becoming a racist and it would end badly if I didn't change my ways. I didn't listen until it was too late. But I've thought a lot about it since I came back. I'm trying hard to be a better person in death than I was in life. I've been given a second chance, and I don't want to screw it up."

"That's admirable," Burke says without any hint of condescension. "But I don't see what it has to do with this."

"Your kind were all the same to my dad," I mumble. "Blacks, Arabs, Pakis." I catch myself and make a face. "Pakistanis. They were something less than us, not worthy of being treated as equals. I knew he was wrong, but I never called him on it. I played along. And me throwing Tyler to the zombies was the result of that.

"The way Dad thought about different races... about you... the way I pretended to believe those things too..." I glance with shame at Mr. Burke, then with spite at Josh and Dr. Cerveris. "It's how you lot see zombies."

"It's hardly the same thing," Dr. Cerveris protests. "Racists hate for no valid reason, because of the color of a person's skin or their religious beliefs. Reviveds, on the other hand, are unnatural beasts, savage killers brought back to life by forces beyond our comprehension. They shouldn't exist. They've wreaked irreparable damage and will destroy the world completely if we don't dissect and study them and figure out what makes them tick."

"We experiment so that we can learn and understand," Josh says. "I know it might not seem that way. It could look like torture and execution to a neutral. But there are no neutrals here. It's us against them, with you and the other revitalizeds caught between. We use the zom heads because you can get closer to the reviveds than we can, test them in ways we can't. Your input might help restore control of this planet to the living. Zombies are dead. They can't be cured. Would you rather we let them run free and kill?"

"No," I scowl. "I understand why you have to stop them, why you lock them up, even why you execute them. But there must be other ways to experiment on them." I look pleadingly to Burke. "There must be."

"Of course there are," Burke says.

"Billy..." Josh growls.

Burke waves away the soldier's objection. "She's not a fool. You're right, B. It is cruel. It's inhuman. On a moral level it's unpardonable." He shrugs wearily. "But we're at war. That's not a great excuse, I know. I certainly wouldn't have let my students get away with it in class if they'd tried to use that argument to justify war crimes. But this is where we're at. I don't call the shots and I don't have the right to pass judgment. So I do what I can to help, even if it means going against everything I once believed in." He nods at Josh and Dr. Cerveris. "These gentlemen would appreciate it if you would too."

I shift uncomfortably. "It's wrong."

"Yes," Burke says. "But we're asking you to cooperate regardless."

"You were better than that once," I whisper.

Burke winces, looks away shamefully, doesn't respond.

"A racist zombie taking the moral high ground," Dr. Cerveris jeers.

"She's not a zombie," Burke snaps.

"Thanks to you," Josh says softly.

I frown. "What does that mean?"

Burke is looking at Josh, surprised. "I thought I wasn't supposed to mention that."

"You weren't," Josh says. "But if we tell her, maybe we can get through to her...."

Burke chuckles cynically. "When all else fails, try the truth." He winks at me. "We don't know why certain zombies revitalize. It's a mystery. Based on all the studies we've conducted, it shouldn't happen. The dead lose their senses. Their brains shut down and all traces of their old selves are lost. In damn near all of them, that loss is permanent, no way back.

"But a few of you defy the laws. You recover consciousness and carry on as you did when you were alive, for however long your bodies hold up."

"Any idea how long that might be?" I interrupt.

Burke checks with Josh, who frowns, then shrugs. "Why not?" he says with just a hint of dark relish.

"We think - " Burke begins.

"It's an imprecise science," Dr. Cerveris cuts in coolly. "We have little evidence to back up our theories. But judging by what we've seen, and forecasting as accurately as we can, we anticipate an eighteen- to twenty-four-month life cycle for revitalized specimens."

"You mean I'll shut down and die for real within a couple of years?" I gasp.

"Maybe as little as a year," Josh says. "You've been with us for more than six months already, remember."

"But the revitalization process only kicked in a matter of weeks ago," Dr. Cerveris reminds him. "We're not sure if the time before that counts or not."

"Wait a minute," I snap. "Are you saying that all of the zombies will be wiped out within the next two years?"

"Sadly, no," Dr. Cerveris replies. "Only the revitalizeds. The brains of the reviveds are stable, and from what we've seen, will remain so, at least in the near future. But when consciousness returns, the brain starts to operate differently. It conflicts with the demands of its undead body and begins to decompose. Unless we can find a way to counteract that - and so far we haven't had much opportunity to study the phenomenon - the prognosis is grim."

"So I've a couple of years max," I sigh.

"If they're right," Burke says. "They might not be."

"But we usually are," Dr. Cerveris smirks.

"That's not your main worry, though," Burke says.

I raise an eyebrow. "There's worse than being told I'll be worm fodder in a couple of years?"

Burke nods solemnly. "The first revitalizeds didn't last long. They were isolated once their guards noticed the change in them, but after a week or so, they reverted. Their brains flatlined and they went back to being mindless zombies. No one has ever recovered their mental faculties a second time."

"What changed?" I murmur.

"We found a way to prolong the revitalization," Dr. Cerveris says proudly.

"How?"

"Nutrients."

"You mean the gruel you've been feeding us keeps our brains going?"

"Yes. Without it, you would deteriorate rapidly."

I stare at the doctor, then Burke. "For a bunch of quacks who don't know why the dead reanimate or how some of us regain our senses, they seem to have figured out that part pretty quickly."

Burke smiles. "Good, B. You're thinking clearly, looking for answers behind the half-truths and lies. Go on. Take it further."

"I don't know if we need to tell her that much," Josh intercedes.

"We've guided her this far," Burke counters. "There's no harm in letting her go all the way."

I try to make sense of what I've been told, but I run into a brick wall. "It's no good," I tell Burke. "I don't know what you want me to work out."

"Think," Burke groans. "What's the one thing that zombies everywhere - from those you've seen in movies to those you saw at the school - go wild for? If you had a zombie locked up, and it was bellowing and wailing, how would you calm it down?"

"I don't..."

I stop, flashing on an image of the video footage that Josh showed me, of me bent over a boy, digging around inside his skull. In all the films I saw, all the comics I read, I never came across a zombie who didn't hunger for the juicy gray matter common to humans everywhere. The kind of gray matter, I realize with a sick jolt, that Reilly has been serving me every day.

Burke sees that I'm up to speed. He grins humorlessly, then says without emotion, "They've been feeding you human brains to keep you conscious. You need them to survive."

"So tell us again," Dr. Cerveris says smugly as I stare at them with revulsion and horror. "Who's the monster here?"