Zom-B Baby

Book 5: Zom-B

by Darren Shan

Genres: YA Horror; YA Zombies

Synopsis

B has spent the last few months bunking with the Angels, a group of teens dedicated to eradicating the evil dead from the face of the earth, beginning with the undead roaming the abandoned wreckage that was once London.

But the Angels' mission is a bit more complicated than that, and B takes to the streets of a very changed London to decide: is it a mission really to be believed? But instead of answers, B finds a horror beyond imagining.

A Hachette Audio production.

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 160

Sample

When zombies rampaged through London on the day that the world fell, Becky Smith ended up trapped in her school. Having been cornered by the brain-hungry beasts, her heart was ripped from her chest and she became one of the living dead.

After months of mindless mayhem, she recovered her senses in an underground complex. She found out that there were two types of zombies—reviveds and revitalizeds. The latter could think and reason the way they had when they were alive, but they had to keep eating brains or they’d become hollow-minded reviveds again.

The revitalized teenagers in the complex referred to themselves as zom heads. They were being held prisoner by a group of scientists and soldiers. B hated being one of their lab rats, and refused to play along with their experiments. To punish her, they stopped feeding her, and she waited for her brain to shut down again.

Before B regressed, a nightmarish clown, Mr. Dowling, invaded with a team of mutants, attacked the humans and freed the undead. B and another zom head called Rage managed to escape. B wandered the streets of London for a time, surviving on any scraps of brain that she could find in the many corpses littering the ruined city. During her travels she met an artist, Timothy Jackson, who believed God had given him the task of painting pictures of the zombies, so that future generations would have a record of the atrocities.

After another run-in with soldiers and the mutants, a broken, lonely B wound up at County Hall, where the centenarian Dr. Oystein offered her refuge. He was one of the few adult revitalizeds in the world. The kindly scientist had established a base for undead, conscious teenagers like B. He referred to them as Angels and, like the artist Timothy, believed that he was on a mission from God.

Dr. Oystein told B that he was the very first revitalized, that God had directly intervened to restore his senses, that he was working to save the world, under orders from the Almighty. As a baby, B had been vaccinated by one of Dr. Oystein’s nurses, as had all of the other revitalizeds. The vaccine was the reason they had recovered their senses.

But Dr. Oystein hadn’t saved the children to be charitable. He needed them to fight in a war. As B listened with a mixture of disbelief and horror, he told her that while he was an agent for a force of universal goodness, Mr. Dowling was a being of universal evil. If the clown’s army overcame Dr. Oystein’s Angels, the world would topple into a dark abyss and every survivor would fall prey to his foul, hellish servants.

The London Dungeon used to be one of the city’s top tourist attractions. It was a fun but grisly place, a cross between a museum and a horror house. It re-created some of London’s darker historical moments, bringing back to life the world of people like Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd. It featured sinister, imposing models of buildings from the past, props like hanging skeletons and snarling rats, nerve-tingling videos and light shows, and actors to play the various infamous figures. There were even some stomach-churning rides. I visited it quite a few times when I was alive, and always had a brilliant time.

I haven’t been in the Dungeon since returning to County Hall as a revitalized, but right now it feels like the most natural part of the complex to head for.

I wander through the deserted rooms, enjoying the isolation and the gloominess. The actors are gone, and someone must have done the rounds and turned off all the projectors and video clips, but most of the lights work, and the sets and props haven’t been disturbed. It’s still the coolest damn place in London.

I also think, looking back, that it served as a taste of what was to come. The London Dungeon painted a picture of a blood-drenched city full of terror and murder, and the people who built it were right—this is a realm of madness and death. We were never more than one sharp twist away from total chaos, from demonic clowns prancing through the streets and tenderhearted but loopy scientists setting themselves up as spokesmen for God.

I thought I’d escaped the craziness when I came to County Hall. London had been destroyed, zombies had taken over, life as we knew it had come to an end. But Dr. Oystein seemed to offer sanctuary from the grim bedlam of the streets. I thought I could rest easy, make friends, learn from the good doctor, start to build a new life (or should that be unlife?) for myself.

That was before the doctor told me that God speaks to him.

I creep along a street that looks like it’s been transported to the present day from Victorian London. I pause, imagining banks of swirling fog, waiting for Jack the Ripper to leap out and claim me for his own. That’s not very likely, I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I reckon just about anything could happen in this crazy, messed-up world.

That’s what’s so weird and scary about the story Dr. Oystein fed us. There was a time when I would have written him off as a kook, but given what I’ve seen and experienced recently, I can’t say for sure that he is barking mad. He told me he was forced by Nazis to create the zombie gene—that’s probably fact. It’s clear that he’s an expert on the living dead, having studied them for decades. He’s the one who gave me the ability to revitalize.

If all that and more is true, then why not the rest of it? The world has always been full of people claiming to be in contact with God. Surely they can’t all have been nutters. If some of them were the genuine article, maybe Dr. Oystein is too. The trouble is, how’s an ordinary girl like me to supposed to be able to tell the difference between a prophet and a madman?

I curse loudly and slam a fist into one of the fake walls, punching a large hole through it. Someone chuckles behind me.

“Now there’s a cliché if ever I saw one.”

I turn and glare at Rage, who has followed me in from the riverbank. Mr. Burke is with him. Rage is sneering. Burke just looks uncomfortable.

“Why don’t you go drown yourself?” I snarl at Rage.

“I would if I could,” he smirks, then pokes his chest. “I’m the same as you. My lungs don’t work.”

I had left Rage, Burke and Dr. Oystein abruptly, without saying anything, once the doctor had hit us with the revelation that he was God’s envoy, locked in battle with Mr. Dowling, aka the literal spawn of Satan. I couldn’t take any more. My head was bursting.

“I haven’t been in this part of the building before,” Burke says, looking around.

“This was the London Dungeon,” I tell him.

My ex-teacher nods. “I often meant to check it out, but I never got around to it.”

“I came here lots,” I sniff. “My mum hated the place, but Dad was like me, he thought it was great. He’d bring me here, just the two of us, and we’d have a wicked time.”

“I bet,” Burke says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shout, thinking he’s having a dig at my racist dad, implying that he liked the horrors of the Dungeon because he was horrific himself.

Burke blinks, startled by my tone. “Nothing. It looks like it must have been a lot of fun back in the day. That’s all I was saying.”

Rage snorts. “Always thought the Dungeon was rubbish myself.”

I laugh shortly. “That’s because you’re a moron with no taste.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That must be why I fancy you.”

I give him the finger, but chuckle despite myself.

“So what do you think of old Oystein’s story?” Rage asks.

I shrug and look away.

“He’s off his head, isn’t he?” Rage pushes.

“I suppose…”

“Do you think any of it was re. . .