The Restless Dead: A Zombie Novel Read Free

as black as coal. They lacked that spark of humanity and self-awareness, whatever it is that makes us human.
    Something clicked in that brain of his. He stared at us like a starving dog eyeing someone's dinner. His mouth dropped open and rancid black sludge spilt out. Then he howled.
    I thought I was going to puke.
    He grabbed for my arm, his blackened teeth as sharp as knives snapping at me. I managed to sidestep his reach.
    A scream shrieked out of my throat before I could stop it.
     
     
     
     

2 HOW TO KILL A ZOMBIE
     
    The thing about being confronted by zombies is that we all think we’ll know what to do. We’ve all seen the movies, watched the TV shows. To kill a zombie you need to splatter the brains all over the shop with a gun. But the reality is different for those of us living in Scotland where we don’t have guns in our wardrobes or locked in a box, because we don’t keep guns, period. That makes killing the zombies damn difficult.
    My boyfriend is useless as a handyman, so there’s no toolkit in our third floor tenement flat. We have no hammers, chisels, or drills to destroy the brain of the zombie who used to be my boyfriend’s best pal.
    Okay, this so-called pal drives me mental, like the time he got Scott, who’s not a big drinker, steamboats one night and dragged him along to a lap dancing bar where he ended up slipping crisp twenties into Monique or Cindi’s g-string. (I know this because he kindly recorded footage on Scott’s mobile phone.) I’m still pissed about that, but I don’t hate him to the extent that I want to cave his head in. 
    So when the thing that used to be Archie, struggles to its feet and lumbers towards us, arms outstretched, as if pretending to be rent-a-ghost, I snatch the first thing I can get my mitts on, an iron I’d forgotten to turn off, and I scud him across the head with it.
    There’s an almighty hiss as it scorches his flesh, accompanied by the smell of burnt barbecue. The iron trundles onto the floor where it lies, scorching the carpet. I can’t believe what I’ve just done and my hand goes limp.
    Archie’s makes a throaty noise and lurches towards me. That's when Scott gets busy, bludgeoning his best mate over the head with an ugly, heavy lamp his parents had bought us as a housewarming present.
    Globs of sticky brain matter splatter the wall as though someone dumped mince in a blender without the lid on and switched it to turbo, but Scott still keeps whacking dead Archie, because dead Archie keeps coming at me.
    My back's to the wall. Will he not die, again?
    Scott’s yelling obscenities, including ones I’ve never heard before. I’d have made a mental note to pull him up about it later, but this wasn’t the time for points scoring.
    As Scott struggles to do in Archie with the heavy lamp, an idea flashes across my brain.
    My parents had gone to Florida a while back, and knowing Scott loves baseball, they’d bought a bat for him: a Louisville Slugger. He’d celebrated by hitting a baseball against the wall of our flat and smashing the place up, "pretending to be Derek Jeter."
    I’d swiftly lost the bat under our couch to stop myself from beating him to death because he was wrecking the house.
    The zombie formerly known as Archie, is staggering about now with most of the top of its head a bloody pulp and a remaining eyeball hanging by a thread like a yo-yo.
    Reaching under the couch, I hauled out the bat. Scott stupidly gave me the focus of his attention.
    “You...”
    One word is all he gets out because dead Archie dives at him, gums pulled back rabid-dog style, a bubbling, foul smelling drool dribbling from his cavernous mouth.
    Lifting the baseball bat above my head (which isn’t easy because it weighs a freaking ton), I roar a battle cry Boudicca would have been proud of and bring the bat down squarely on Archie’s head, pretending its a coconut instead of a man’s skull I’m hitting. It howls as I crack him over the head, again and