Zom-B Underground by Darren Shan Page B

me what little might be left of my soul.
    “I won’t do it,” I moan, staring miserably at the table. “You’re a pack of jackals and I won’t join your sick, screwed-up cause, even if you kill me.”
    “Oh, we won’t kill you,” Dr. Cerveris says. He leans across the table and stares at me coldly. “We have a far more fitting punishment for obstinate hypocrites like you.
Nil by mouth.
This time next week, when your brain has turned to mush, you’ll eat your own mother if we set her before you.”
    “And who knows,” Josh purrs menacingly, in what I can only pray is nothing more than a nasty little dig, “maybe we will….”

FOURTEEN
    Three days pass. I’m locked inside my cell. Nobody visits, not even Reilly.
    No food.
    My stomach doesn’t rumble. I don’t feel hungry. But I’m twitchy. I find myself obsessing about the gray gunk that I used to be fed, craving more. I get shooting pains through my head and insides. Sometimes I have to double over and grit my teeth until the pain passes. My vision is getting worse, even though I keep adding the drops. Conversely, for some strange reason my sense of smell and hearing are improving. The noises of the complex often grind away at my brain until I have to clamp my hands over my ears to block them out.
    Last night, when I was lying on mybed, I blacked out for a while, the way I used to when I fell asleep. The next thing I knew I was on my feet, head butting the mirror. I’d smashed it to pieces but was still butting it, snarling softly.
    I’ve tried to stay active since then, exercising, walking around my cell, doing push-ups and squats. I won’t give in to fear. I
won’t
. Let them starve me. I don’t care. I’m not going to play their game. I’d rather die than become a killer.
    Really?
a small part of me whispers.
    “Yeah,” I tell it.
    But my voice quivers and I’m not entirely sure that I can believe myself, that I can stay strong and true.

    Working out. Keeping busy. Wanting to cling to consciousness for as long as I can, hoping that if I stay focused, it will help.
    I’ve been thinking a lot about Mum and Dad. I’d managed to put thoughts of them on hold over the last few weeks, but Josh’s threat about my mum has set me wondering again. I’m pretty sure they’re not prisoners here–if Josh really had a card like that up his sleeve, he wouldn’t have revealed it so casually–but are they squeezing out an existence in a similar complex? Were they killed? Turned into zombies? Or have they carried on as normal in a world not much different from the way it was on the day of the attacks?
    By what I was told, millions of people were killed in London,and hundreds of thousands were turned into zombies. But maybe Josh and the doctor were lying, feeding me misinformation to make me think the situation is worse than it really is.



As I’m driving myself mad thinking about the possibilities, the door suddenly slides open and Josh and Reilly stomp into my room. They both look impassive. I was doing squats but I stop and stand. Stare at the pair of them defiantly.
    “I thought you might have had a change of heart,” Josh says. The sound of his voice makes me wince, it’s so loud.
    “You forgot,” I sneer, and pull up my T-shirt to expose the hole in my chest. “I don’t have a heart.”
    Josh sighs. “I’m not enjoying this, Becky. I can rustle up some gruel for you in a matter of minutes if you give me the word.”
    “I can give you two words,” I tell him. “The second is
off
. Can you guess the first?”
    Josh shakes his head and laughs—to my sensitive ears, it’s like a jackhammer. “I really hope you relent and come to see things our way,” he says. “You and I could be great friends if you cut yourself a little slack.”
    “I’d cut my own throat before I’d claim you as a friend,” I grunt.
    Josh gasps theatrically, then nods at Reilly. “Take her through.”
    “Where?” I ask, tensing, thinking this is it, they’re