Zom-B Underground (Zom-B #2)

A large, white room. No windows, but there's a long mirror in one of the walls. I've seen enough films and TV shows to guess that it's a two-way observation point. I bet there's a team of soldiers or scientists on the other side, watching everything.

There's a pool table and a ping-pong table down at one end of the room. A bookshelf with a scattering of books, magazines and comics. A couple of TVs, one hooked up to a DVD player, the other to a video-game console. There's a table close to that TV, loaded with games and a few iPods. A variety of couches and chairs are positioned around the place.

A couple of the zom heads are playing pool. Three are busy gaming. One - the girl called Cathy - is watching TV and filing down her teeth. And the final zom head is slumped on a chair near the bookshelf, flicking through a car magazine.

Seven in total. One more than I saw in the room all those weeks ago.

I hover by the door - Reilly didn't say anything when he let me in - waiting for the others to notice me. Finally one of the guys playing pool looks up and shouts, "Hey! It's the girl who kicked Rage's arse!"

Everything comes to a stop and those who were sitting stand up to ogle me, all except the one in the chair with the magazine. He just glances at me, yawns, then returns to his mag.

I push forward, smiling awkwardly. "Hi. I'm Becky Smith, but everyone calls me B."

"Becky it is," one of the boys laughs, and jogs across. He sticks out a hand - it's covered by a glove and bandages. "I'm Mark," he says as we shake hands. "I wasn't there when you revitalized. They keep me out of stuff like that. Afraid I'll react badly to the flames."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

The boy gestures at himself. He's covered completely from neck to toe, heavy clothes, some sort of a padded vest, more bandages, heavy-duty boots. "I got burned to the bone while I was a revived. They don't know how. My face is okay but I'm like a skeleton under all these layers. I have to stay wrapped up. They're worried that if I lose any more internal - "

"Can it, Worm," one of the other boys says. "You'd bore her to death if she wasn't already dead." He nods at me but doesn't smile. He's dark-skinned, with short curly hair. I would have shot him the finger six months ago in response to his nod. But since I'm trying to change and accept everyone as an equal, no matter what color they are, I nod back at him instead.

"B," I tell him.

"I know," he says drily. "I'm not deaf. I'm Peder."

"Danny," the boy beside him says. Danny's tall and bony. Greasy blond hair and bad acne. He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt like mine. As I look around, I see that all of the others are similarly dressed, except for the guy in the chair. He's in the leathers he was wearing when I first saw him.

"Cathy Kelly," the girl introduces herself coldly. She sits and focuses on the video game. She has long, dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Pretty, but not in a soft way.

One of the other boys comes over and shakes my hand. "Gokhan."

"Gherkin?" I frown.

"Gokhan." He spells it out. "Turkish, innit?"

He's plump and relaxed-looking. Olive skin. Large, pudgy fingers. He's filed down the bones sticking out of the tips and painted them with swirling, colorful designs.

"And I'm Tiberius," the other guy who was playing pool says. He's the one who first spotted me. He's short, with ginger hair and loads of freckles.

"Tiberius?" I laugh automatically. "What sort of a dumb name is that?"

"I was named after the river Tiber in Rome," he says stiffly. Then he turns his back on me, offended, and snaps at Mark, "Are you playing or what, Worm?"

"In a minute," Mark says. "I want to show B round first. Don't you want to get to know her? She's one of us now."

"Maybe she is and maybe she isn't," the boy in the chair says. He finally stands, cracks his knuckles over his head and makes a yawning motion. I know from practicing in my cell that we can mimic the habits of the past, when we had a set of fully functioning lungs. I even find myself yawning or sneezing by accident sometimes, my body remembering happier, simpler days.

The yawning knuckle cracker is the tall guy with the big head and small ears, the chubby, rosy cheeks, a chunk bitten out of the left one. The guy I clobbered over the head when I first recovered. Rage.

"Of course she's one of us," Mark says. "She can talk, can't she?"

"Oh, she's a revitalized," Rage says, eyeing me beadily. "Doesn't mean she's a zom head though. You've gotta earn that right. Which you haven't yet, Worm, in case you'd forgotten."

Mark scowls and stares at his feet. "It's not my fault they don't let me join in with the rest of you. I would if I could. You know that."

"You say that you would," Rage sneers. "But there's saying and there's doing, and so far you've done zip. For all we know, you've cried off and asked to be excused regular duties. Maybe the burns are a sham. Maybe they're just saying that because you asked them to cover up for the fact that you're a coward."

Mark stiffens, then squares himself and raises his fists. His hands are shaking, more with fear, I think, than indignation. "Say that again and I'll thump you," he squeaks. "I don't care how big you are."

Rage laughs. "Back down, Worm. I'm only messing with you."

He comes closer and circles me slowly. I say nothing while I'm being examined. When he's finished, I stare at him calmly. "Like what you see?"

"Not a lot," he sniffs. "I don't think Cathy has much to worry about."

"Why should I be worried?" the girl barks, looking up from her game.

"You've been queen bee round these parts," Rage says. "You know that all the boys fancy you, since they've no one else to lust after. Nobody would want to lose that sort of a following. And I don't think you will. No offense, Becky."

"Get stuffed," I snarl.

Rage cocks his head. "Are you a tough girl?" he whispers. "You are, aren't you? A fighter, yeah?"

"Wind me up and find out," I challenge him, fingers curling by my sides.

Rage glances at my fingers, then studies my eyes. "Looks like I was wrong. You are one of us."

"We accept you, gooble gobble," Tiberius chuckles from beside the pool table.

"What the hell does that mean?" I growl.

"Pay no attention to him," Gokhan laughs. "He's always coming out with weird crap like that."

"It's from Freaks," Tiberius says. "That old movie about circus freaks." He looks around for support. "Some of you must have seen it."

"Was it black-and-white?" Cathy asks.

"Yeah. It was made in the 1930s."

"Then of course we haven't seen it," she snorts. "We don't all waste our time on boring old movies."

"Freaks, boring?" Tiberius roars. "It's an amazing film. They used real-life freaks. It gave me nightmares the first time my dad showed it to me."

"They'd probably have found a role for you in it if you'd been alive back then," Cathy says frostily.

Tiberius glares at her, then turns to me. "Anyway, at one point a normal woman marries one of the freaks and they have a big party to welcome her into the family. They all start chanting, We accept you, gooble-gobble. They mean it nicely, but what they're really saying is that she's one of them now, a freak, an outcast, a child of the damned."

Tiberius bends over the pool table to take a shot, then says again, but glumly this time, as if he feels sorry for me, "We accept you, gooble-gobble."