Zom-B Underground Read Online Free

hesitation if ordered. A day might come when we have to lock horns, and maybe one of us won’t walk away from that clash. But he’s treating me as humanely as he can–more than I probably would if our roles were reversed–and I appreciate that.
    I spoon the last of the food into my mouth, chew a few times and swallow. “All done, boss.”
    “Like I give a damn,” he says, taking the bowl from me. He crosses to the sink and picks up the bucket beneath it. Water wassupplied to the taps once Reilly had warned me not to drink any of it, just use it for washing, and the bucket was put in place before he brought my first meal.
    “Give me a minute,” I grumble sourly. “I want to savor the moment.”
    I can no longer process food or drink the normal way. Reilly says it would sit in my guts, turn putrid and decay, unaided by any digestive juices. The bits that broke down into liquids would flow through me and dribble out, meaning I’d have to wear a diaper. The solids would stay inside me indefinitely. If I ate enough, they’d back up in my stomach and throat.
    “Would that harm me?” I asked Reilly once.
    “No,” he said. “But maggots and worms would thrive on the refuse and insects would be attracted to it. You’d become a warren for creepy crawlies and they’d chew through you. They couldn’t do any real damage unless they got into your brain and destroyed enough of it to kill you, but would you want to live like that?”
    The image of insects burrowing through my flesh made me shiver so much that, if I hadn’t been dead already, I would have sworn that somebody had walked over my grave.
    I can safely eat the specially prepared food that Reilly gives me, but I can’t keep the bulk of it down. According to Reilly, when the scientists first started to experiment, they used intravenous tubes to feed nutrients to the zombies. He said that’s still the best way, but since most people prefer to eat, the good folk in the labs came upwith a way for us to act as if we were still capable of enjoying a meal. The gray crud is designed to release nutrients into our clogged-up bloodstream almost instantly. But we have to get rid of the rest by ourselves.
    “Come on,” Reilly says, tapping a foot. “You’re not the only one I have to deal with.”
    “I won’t do it until you tell me how many others you look after.”
    “Doesn’t bother me,” Reilly says, turning away. “You’re the one who has to live with the stink and insects.”
    “Wait,” I stop him. Pulling a face, I lean over the bucket and stick a finger down my throat, careful not to tear the soft lining. The gray stuff comes surging back up and I vomit into the bucket, shuddering as I spit the last dregs from my lips.
    “Not very ladylike, is it?” I grunt as I pass the bucket to a smiling Reilly.
    “I don’t think you were ever in danger of being mistaken for a lady,” he says, “even when you were one of the living.”
    “I could sue you for saying that sort of thing to me,” I huff.
    “Lawyers don’t represent corpses,” he smirks.
    I snarl at the grinning soldier and gnash my teeth warningly, but Reilly knows I’m not dumb enough to bite him. One of the first things he told me was that I can still be decommissioned, even though I’m already dead. As I already knew, zombies need their brains to function.
    Even if they didn’t want to kill me, they could punish me inother ways. I don’t feel as much pain as I used to, but I’m not completely desensitized. I dug one of my finger bones into my flesh, to test myself, and it hurt. When I pushed even farther, it hurt like hell. The dead can be tortured too.
    “By the way,” Reilly says just before he exits. “You’ll be entertaining a couple of visitors shortly, so be on your best behavior.”
    “Who’s coming?” I snap, thinking for a second that it’s Mum and Dad, torn between delight and terror at the thought. Part of me doesn’t want them to see me like this. If they’re