I think about that, frowning. It’s a strange thing for a celestial being to say.
Then, as my senses start to swim back into place, I become aware of a towel draped over my head, a sponge being dabbed around the inside of my stomach. The light isn’t a heavenly, other-worldly ball. It’s the glow of a bulb.
I try pushing myself away and shouting, but my mouth is full of overgrown teeth. I can only moan.
“Easy,” the voice comes again. “You have nothing to fear. I’m looking after you.”
I want to ask who it is and what’s happening, but I can’t produce any words. Since I’m in a helpless position, I relax and let the person go about their business. Memories return and it doesn’t take me long to realize where I am and what must be going on.
I told the twins and Ciara the bad news, and what I was planning next. They were distraught, but the twins hid from their gloom as best they could by promising to go and release Mr. Burke, saving me some time. They were going to search for Dr. Oystein after that, to help him any way they could if he was still alive. Their love for him hadn’t diminished, regardless of what he’d done.
Ciara stayed in the Bow Quarter and said she’d keep things running smoothly. In case any of the Angels returned. Loyal to the end. She held herself together while we were there, but I’m sure she wept bitterly for Reilly when we left.
After a long, hard trek, I made it to New Kirkham and told Jakob about the Dowling brothers, the viruses, how things had played out. He thanked me for delivering the news, promised to inform the others in the settlement, but advised me to get the hell out of there before he did.
“They’ll hate you,” he said sadly. “And me, for my association with you. They might even kill me for being the bearer of the message, but there’s no reason for you to be killed too.”
I begged Jakob to come with me, but he wouldn’t budge. He regarded the citizens of New Kirkham as his people now and he was determined to see out his days there, even if the reward for his loyalty was execution. He wished me well, told me not to blame myself and helped slip me out.
The journey back to London was an agonizing nightmare. I could barely walk more than a few steps without having to stop and recuperate. I’ll never know how I made it—sheer stubbornness, I suppose. Must have taken me three or four days.
But finally I staggered back into County Hall. It had been ransacked and badly burnt in places by Mr. Dowling’s mutants, but luckily for me they hadn’t touched the Groove Tubes. They were empty, so I filled one, undressed, blew a farewell kiss to the world and clambered in.
That should have been the end of matters, but someone must have found me and dragged me out, either because they thought I needed help or because they wanted me to be around for the pain and hurt. Looks like I won’t be skipping the end of the world after all.
I try not to feel too much resentment as the person tending me swabs out my nostrils and ear canals with cotton buds. I probably didn’t deserve an easy exit, not after all I’d done. It’s apt that I was hauled out to bear witness to the destruction. I won’t complain or ask to be returned to the Tube. As the old saying goes, it’s a fair cop.
“Tilt your head back and open your mouth wide,” the person says. My ears must still be partly blocked because I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman.
Whoever it is, he or she slides a drill up under the towel and sets to work on my teeth, first removing the remains of the false ones that Mr. Dowling installed, then focusing on my oversized fangs. I’m amazed they’ve sprouted as much as they have. I can only have been in the Groove Tube a few days. Maybe the doc found a way to strengthen the solution since I last went for a refreshing dip.
The drilling goes on for ages. The person works carefully, like a dentist, stopping every few minutes to let my teeth cool down. When we’re getting close to the end, he or she sets the drill aside and finishes the job with a sturdy metal file.
I try to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Wait,” I’m told. “The device in your throat needs to be replaced.”
A hand sneaks up inside me, through the gap where my lungs should be, and fiddles with the little pumping mechanism on the inner wall of my throat, which Mr. Dowling had inserted. The person talks while fitting me with a new speech box.
“You’re lucky that your stomach wall was cut away. It makes cleaning out the liquid a much simpler task. No need for an enema this time.”
I chuckle mutely, thanking Heaven for small mercies.
There’s a bit more tinkering, then the person steps back and says, “Try that.”
“What do you want me to say?” I ask.
“Amazing! So clear, after all this time.”
“After all what time?” I grumble, trying to take off the towel so that I can get a good look at whoever I’m talking to.
“Easy.” The person stops me. “We’ll be able to operate on your eyes, but not for a while. In the meantime I have a thick pair of sunglasses for you, made with prescription lenses. They’re more like goggles, but trust me, you’ll need them.”
I wait impatiently until the glasses are fetched and set in place. I try to get up, but my toe bones have lengthened and I almost topple over. “Sorry,” the person says. “Let me chop those off for you. I’ll do your finger bones too.”
As my personal attendant is working on the bones, I tug the towel off my head and wince as light floods in. The glasses are incredibly thick, and the room has been subtly lit, but, even so, at first it’s like staring straight into the sun.
“I did warn you,” my helper says as I cover my eyes with an arm.
“Yeah, yeah,” I snap. “Everyone’s an expert. Why don’t you…”
I stop. I’ve caught sight of my finger bones. They’ve regrown in the Tube, but are far longer than they ever were before, at least sixty or seventy centimeters. The toe bones that haven’t been trimmed yet are a similar length.
“How the hell did they grow so much?” I gasp. “What did the doc add to the solution?”
“Nothing,” comes the reply. “It’s the same as it always was.”
“But my teeth and bones never grew like this before,” I note.
“That’s because you were never in the Tube as long as you were this time.”
“What are you talking about?” I frown. “It can’t have been more than a few days, a week at most, otherwise there wouldn’t be anyone around to pull me out. Unless…”
Hope flares within me.
“Did the viruses fail?” I shout.
“No,” the person says quietly. “Clements-13 and Schlesinger-10 did what they were designed to do. Every human, zombie and mutant perished.”
“But then how… who…?”
“I’ll explain it all shortly. But I think you should shower first, after I’ve dealt with the rest of these bones. Then we will dress you. And then–”
“Sod that,” I growl, forcing myself to my feet. It takes me a few seconds to find my balance, but then I steady myself and look around.
At first the room is a ball of blinding light and my head fills with pain. But I hang tough and, gradually, the light starts to dim and objects swim into focus. I see the Groove Tube, the towel on the floor, my severed toe bones. I turn and there are the walls and door, the windows covered with thick curtains to block any outside light.
Then I turn towards the person who fished me out. The first thing I realize is that he or she is about my height and totally naked. The next thing I notice is that it’s not a he or she—this individual has no genitals. There’s just smooth flesh where the legs meet.
Stunned, my gaze shoots up. He… she… it is smiling shyly. Its hair is a dark brown color, cut tight to the scalp. I don’t recognize the face. What I do recognize, however, are the pure white eyes and the hole in its scalp.
“Holy Moly?” I wheeze.
The smile widens. My rescuer nods with delight. And says, “Hello, Mummy. It’s good to have you back.”
B
I let the adult Holy Moly shower me, saying nothing as I’m gently rinsed down, all the gunk washed away.
“Your ears have rusted,” Holy Moly tuts. “They’ll need to be replaced. It will be a simple task, but you’ll have to put up with these for the time being. I don’t think the rust will affect your hearing.
“We’ll fix your stomach too,” Holy Moly says as it hoses out my hollow insides. “Not in the ugly way that Daddy stitched bits of flesh together. We’ll clone your flesh and create a covering that looks almost the way it did before it was sliced open.”
Turning off the shower, Holy Moly pats me dry and wraps me in a purple robe. In a daze I sit, and the one-time eerie baby hums as it focuses on the bones sticking out of my fingers and toes. It sheared off the remainder of them before putting me in the shower, but now it vigorously files down the stumps, reducing them and smoothing them out.
“How?” I finally wheeze as Holy Moly is working on my left hand, having finished with both feet and the fingers of my right hand.
“You’ll have to be more precise than that, Mummy,” Holy Moly says without pausing.
“How are you here?” I ask. “How am I here? Why aren’t we dead like all the others?”
Holy Moly nods happily, as if that was the question it had anticipated. “All of the babies survived. We were resistant to the viruses.”
“Mr. Dowling found a way to counteract the viruses?” I croak.
“Only in our case,” Holy Moly says. “Since we were laboratory-grown clones, he was able to tinker with our DNA. He couldn’t be certain that we’d survive, but he was quietly optimistic.”
“He never said,” I mumble.
“He never told anyone.” Holy Moly giggles. “At the time we couldn’t understand why we were the only ones who didn’t drop dead. It was decades before we figured it out.”
“Decades?” I say weakly.
“As for Mummy,” Holy Moly beams, “you were saved by the Groove Tube. You were dying when you entered, but the liquid nourished you and slowed down the rate of decay. If the virus had been active for longer, you would have eventually perished, but it only had a lifespan of several years. Once it passed from your system, the liquid began to restore all of the cells that had been destroyed, and you have been kept in a nice, neutral state throughout the centuries since.”
“Centuries?” I cry.
“Dr. Oystein didn’t know that a zombie could ride out the effects of the viruses inside a Groove Tube,” Holy Moly goes on. “If he had, he would have made more and retreated to them with his Angels. They all could have been saved.”
“Are you saying that I’m the only one who survived?” I ask shakily.
Holy Moly purses its lips. “Actually there were several others, scattered across the world. They had either been recovering in Groove Tubes when the virus was unleashed, or sought the refuge of them like you, so as not to have to face the end of civilization.
“Unfortunately we didn’t discover them until after we’d begun to travel. We didn’t leave this country for two hundred and sixteen years. By the time we found others like you, the Tubes maintaining them had malfunctioned. They died like fetuses in their wombs. We buried them. We thought you would like that.”
I’m still wearing the glasses. I lift them now, even though it pains me, to stare at Holy Moly directly as I ask, “How long was I in there?”
Holy Moly answers casually. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine years, three hundred and fifty-seven days exactly.”
There’s a long, stunned silence. Then I slowly replace my glasses.
“Almost a thousand years,” I say hoarsely.
“Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of when you released the viruses,” Holy Moly confirms. “That’s why I fished you out today. We wanted you to be with us to celebrate the millennium.”
“A thousand years,” I whisper. “I must be dreaming.”
“Silly Mummy,” Holy Moly laughs. “You know zombies can live for thousands of years. In fact, we think you might live even longer than Dr. Oystein anticipated, having spent so long in a Groove Tube. We can’t be certain, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
I start to tremble. Holy Moly shoots me a sympathetic look, then hugs me.
“it’s ok mummy,” it whispers, sounding like it used to when it was a baby, a thousand years ago. “we’ll take care of you. we love our mummy.”
“What’s it like out there?” I moan. “Did you create the paradise that Dr. Oystein hoped you would? Did you find the embryos and bring back the human race? Is war a thing of the past or are things worse than ever?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Holy Moly smiles, offering me its hand.
I stare at the hand, then up into Holy Moly’s face. “Why wait so long?” I ask. “Why not fish me out before this?”
“We had to grow first,” Holy Moly says. “We didn’t want to remove you until we were sure we knew what we were doing. Then we decided to establish ourselves, explore the world and lay the foundations of our new society, so that you’d have something nice to emerge to. By the time we were ready, it was so close to the thousand-year anniversary that we figured we might as well wait, to make it more special.
“The others will be so excited to see you,” it continues. “I’ve been your attendant for most of your time here. A few more helped, and we’ve allowed a trickle of others to visit, but most of our kind have never seen you, apart from those who were alive when the viruses were released.”
“You mean you’ve cloned more of yourselves since then?”
“Oh yes,” Holy Moly says. “There are a lot more of us now.”
“How many?” I ask.
Holy Moly smiles and twitches its fingers. “Come and find out.”
I gaze through the door of the laboratory into the old courtyard at County Hall, reluctant to leave my cocoon, wanting to learn more about this strange new world before I take my place in it.
“Not the courtyard, Mummy,” Holy Moly says, having read my mind the way it could when it was an infant. “We’re not in County Hall. The Thames flooded a long time ago. Most of London is under water now. We moved you to a safe location before that happened.”
“Where?” I ask.
Holy Moly smiles and twitches its fingers again.
“Okay,” I snap, getting to my feet. “You don’t need to force me. I never backed away from a challenge in the past, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Now there is the Mummy that I know and love,” Holy Moly chuckles. “The bitch is back.”
I cock my head at Holy Moly, wondering if that was meant as an insult or a compliment. When I see that it’s the latter, I nod with satisfaction. “Damn right,” I mutter. “And she’s ready to roll.”
Then, not giving myself any time to feel butterflies in my stomach–not that I even have a stomach at the moment–I ignore Holy Moly’s hand, shoot the naked neuter a tight smile, then march to the door, kick it open and step out into the future, to see what it has in store for me.
the beginning
Zom-B was written between April 7, 2008, and November 5, 2014.
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ALSO BY
DARREN SHAN
THE THIN EXECUTIONER
ZOM-B SERIES
1. ZOM-B
2. ZOM-B UNDERGROUND
3. ZOM-B CITY
4. ZOM-B ANGELS
5. ZOM-B BABY
6. ZOM-B GLADIATOR
6.5. ZOM-B CIRCUS—A ZOM-B ENOVELLA
7. ZOM-B MISSION
8. ZOM-B CLANS
9. ZOM-B FAMILY
10. ZOM-B BRIDE
11. ZOM-B FUGITIVE
THE SAGA OF LARTEN CREPSLEY
BIRTH OF A KILLER
OCEAN OF BLOOD
PALACE OF THE DAMNED
BROTHERS TO THE DEATH
THE DEMONATA SERIES
LORD LOSS
DEMON THIEF
SLAWTER
BEC
BLOOD BEAST
DEMON APOCALYPSE
DEATH’S SHADOW
WOLF ISLAND
DARK CALLING
HELL’S HEROES
THE CIRQUE DU FREAK SERIES
A LIVING NIGHTMARE
THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT
TUNNELS OF BLOOD
VAMPIRE MOUNTAIN
TRIALS OF DEATH
THE VAMPIRE PRINCE
HUNTERS OF THE DUSK
ALLIES OF THE NIGHT
KILLERS OF THE DAWN
THE LAKE OF SOULS
LORD OF THE SHADOWS
SONS OF DESTINY
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
THEN…
ONE: NOW…
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
A: LATER…
B
ALSO BY DARREN SHAN
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.