Free Zom-B Underground by Darren Shan

your precious secrets, though I don’t see what you gain by withholding information from her.” He runs a hand through his hair. It’s grayer than it was six months ago. His eyes are bloodshot, dark bags underneath. He stinks of coffee.
    “What was that about in there?” Burke asks me. “Why did you flip?”
    “If you’d ever stuck a spear through someone’s head, maybe you’d understand,” I mutter.
    “It didn’t bother the others,” Burke says.
    “Well, it should,” I snarl. “We were burning and hacking up
people
. When the hell did that become acceptable?”
    “I told you before you went in,” Josh growls. “They’re not people. They’re monsters.”
    “No,
we’re
the monsters. They can’t help themselves. We can.” I face Burke again. “You remember Tyler Bayor?”
    He has to think for a moment. “Tyler. Yes. He didn’t make it.”
    “That’s because I threw him to the zombies.”
    Burke raises an eyebrow and I quickly tell him about my dad coming to rescue me, yelling at me to throw Tyler to the undead when we needed to stall them, the way I obeyed.
    “You tried to warn me,” I finish sullenly. “You told me I was in danger of becoming a racist and it would end badly if I didn’t change my ways. I didn’t listen until it was too late. But I’ve thought a lot about it since I came back. I’m trying hard to be a better person in death than I was in life. I’ve been given a second chance, and I don’t want to screw it up.”
    “That’s admirable,” Burke says without any hint of condescension. “But I don’t see what it has to do with this.”
    “Your kind were all the same to my dad,” I mumble. “Blacks, Arabs, Pakis.” I catch myself and make a face. “
Pakistanis
. They were something less than us, not worthy of being treated as equals.I knew he was wrong, but I never called him on it. I played along. And me throwing Tyler to the zombies was the result of that.
    “The way Dad thought about different races… about
you
… the way I pretended to believe those things too…” I glance with shame at Mr. Burke, then with spite at Josh and Dr. Cerveris. “It’s how you lot see zombies.”
    “It’s hardly the same thing,” Dr. Cerveris protests. “Racists hate for no valid reason, because of the color of a person’s skin or their religious beliefs. Reviveds, on the other hand, are unnatural beasts, savage killers brought back to life by forces beyond our comprehension. They shouldn’t exist. They’ve wreaked irreparable damage and will destroy the world completely if we don’t dissect and study them and figure out what makes them tick.”
    “We experiment so that we can learn and understand,” Josh says. “I know it might not seem that way. It could look like torture and execution to a neutral. But there are no neutrals here. It’s us against them, with you and the other revitalizeds caught between. We use the zom heads because you can get closer to the reviveds than we can, test them in ways we can’t. Your input might help restore control of this planet to the living. Zombies are dead. They can’t be cured. Would you rather we let them run free and kill?”
    “No,” I scowl. “I understand why you have to stop them, why you lock them up, even why you execute them. But there must be other ways to experiment on them.” I look pleadingly to Burke. “There
must
be.”
    “Of course there are,” Burke says.
    “Billy…” Josh growls.
    Burke waves away the soldier’s objection. “She’s not a fool. You’re right, B. It
is
cruel. It’s inhuman. On a moral level it’s unpardonable.” He shrugs wearily. “But we’re at war. That’s not a great excuse, I know. I certainly wouldn’t have let my students get away with it in class if they’d tried to use that argument to justify war crimes. But this is where we’re at. I don’t call the shots and I don’t have the right to pass judgment. So I do what I can to help, even if it means going against