Geeks vs. Zombies Read Free

he? More like, yeah, as you say, a very big man…with a beard.”
    â€œAnd what does he say?” Chris went on. “What’s his catchphrase?”
    â€œFee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” said Hattie, the older of the two sisters. She spoke dreamily, as if digging up a long-forgotten memory. A happy memory, despite the meaning of the words. “Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
    â€œExactly,” said Chris. “He’s a cannibal. So is the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ It’s the same with ‘The Juniper Tree,’ ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ ‘Sleeping Beauty’…”
    â€œWha-at?” Jibber-Jabber looked amazed. What was Chris going on about now? He’d seen the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty and couldn’t remember any scenes of cannibalism in it.
    â€œRead the original,” said Chris. “It’s all in there. And what about the Greek myths?”
    â€œWhat about them?” Everyone looked around as James came in. He’d swapped his white lab coat for a dark suit and was wearing a piece of black material around his neck as a DIY tie. Add to this a pair of borrowed glasses and a scar crudely drawn on his face with felt pen and it was clear he’d come as Harry Potter. It was also clear that he wasn’t taking Chris’s event terribly seriously.
    â€œThe Greek myths are full of cannibals,” said Chris patiently. “Like the Cyclops in the Odyssey . And there are plenty of tales about adults eating children.” He had fully calmed down now, and returned to his old, slightly withdrawn self.
    â€œYeah?” James sat down at the big central table and slumped down in his seat, his legs splayed. “So what?”
    â€œI bet you’ve never read any Greek myths,” said Chris, and James snorted.
    â€œWhy would I want to read any of that crap?” he said. “I’m a scientist. I don’t waste my time reading made-up stories. I read textbooks. Books that are about something real. I’m doing something useful. Not like you losers. I mean, I saw Clash of the Titans in 3-D—that was Greek. It was useless.”
    â€œIt had nothing to do with the real Greek myths!” said Chris.
    â€œWho cares?” James cast a weary look over the books piled up on the table. “Nobody ate any kids in it.”
    â€œ3-D’s rubbish,” said Jibber-Jabber.
    â€œWell, unless they completely changed the story,” said Chris, “it should start with the baby Perseus being thrown into the sea in a locked chest. They weren’t trying to eat him, but they were trying to kill him.”
    â€œBoring,” said James.
    â€œYou probably think that Uranus is just a funny word that sounds like your anus ,” said Chris. And James snorted again.
    â€œIt’s a planet,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”
    â€œAnd it’s named after a Greek god,” said Chris.
    â€œThere was a god called Your Anus ?” James said the name with relish and laughed. “That is one embarrassing name for a god. If I was a god, I’d much rather be called something cool like Thor or Zeus, or something.”
    â€œUranus was the first ruler of the Greek gods,” Chris said, ignoring James. “Before Zeus. He was the god of the sky. His son Cronos wanted to take over the universe, though, and attacked his father with a sickle.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œIt’s a tool with a big curved blade for cutting down crops.”
    â€œSo who won?”
    â€œCronos. He cut his dad’s privates off and threw them into the sea.”
    â€œNice.”
    â€œBut after Cronos took over, he heard of a prophecy that his own children would do the same thing to him—rise up and overthrow him. So he ate them, one by one, as they were born.”
    â€œDouble nice.”
    â€œOne of them