The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) Read Online Free

each side, and police vans blocked either end of the street. Cameras flashed constantly, and I spotted at least one TV camera.
    The crowd appeared mostly human. Mostly. I spotted a banshee and a couple of furry-faced street weasels near the front of the crush. A pair of cybergeeks, wires protruding from their necks, watched the proceedings from the back. And those were just the ones unable to pass for human. The banshee held a sign that read We’re People Too. I’m always amazed at how quickly people flock to these things. The nosy must give a prayer of thanks to Twitter every day.
    As always, the crowd was self-segregated with protesters for non-human rights on one side and pro-humans on the other, so they could shout and jeer at each other but not stand close enough to actually hold a civilised conversation. About half of the pro-human lot wore the red scarves that labelled them as Human Preservation Front. I gave them a wide berth.
    I headed for the closest constable, a woman with a bored expression at the front of the pro-human lot. I showed her my Lipscombe identification, and she waved me through without argument.
    I ducked under the yellow biohazard tape. There were police everywhere. Constables guarded either end of the road and knocked on the doors of the neighbours. Two black-helmeted Necroambulist Response Team members stood on Malcolm’s front step.
    Despite what Patricia seemed to think, keeping the zompocalypse at bay was a multi-organisation endeavour, and I was hardly big enough to be a cog in its machine. Even the police were secondary. The Necroambulism Response Team were its own independent unit. Tall, well built, uniformed, and almost all male, they were the firemen of the dead, the men who got a call in the middle of the night and raced out, sirens blazing.
    An orange NRT van, its double doors open onto the pavement, was parked diagonally across the road, as close as it could get to a pebble-dashed semi-detached house. The black letters on the van read Necroambulist Response Team and under that: Danger—Live Contaminants. The van stood empty, and a little flash of hope went through me. All Malcolm needed was a heartbeat. Everyone would go away, and he’d be left with an apology and a pamphlet explaining where he could claim damages.
    The house still had its Christmas lights up, and I was only half-surprised to see Malcolm was that person in the neighbourhood who went all out with the decorations. There was a Santa and reindeer on the roof, and a big ‘Merry Christmas’ in flashing green and red lights over the top of the door. Strands of white and blue lights hung from each window. The remains of the door lay on the pavement.
    Despite the early hour, lights blazed from every house on the street, and most of the windows had someone hanging out of them. Only the house to the left of Malcolm’s was dark, but an elderly black man, his hair puffed out like a dandelion, peeped out from behind net curtains.
    The house on the right was the same shape as the others in the road, but had a red brick frontage rather than the white paint or pebble-dash of the rest. A nightgowned woman stood on the front step, hands waggling as she spoke to the two policemen opposite her.
    One was Kingsley Dunne. His thick eyebrows were slightly raised as he listened, and that, along with his round face and bald head, made him look like a tufted owl. He wore his unofficial plain-clothes uniform: neat white shirt, blue tie, and neatly pressed trousers. I didn’t know the other policeman, a podgy, ginger-haired man in his early twenties who looked like he was trying to grow a beard and not succeeding.
    Movement drew my attention to the remains of the front door as Jillie hobbled through it. Five armed NRTs circled her, careful to stay out of reach. Each guard held a wooden pole ending in a metal loop attached to her hands, feet, and neck. A Hannibal-Lector-style mask hid the bottom half of her face. Someone must have told them