Free Family Matters: Season 2 Book 3 (Killing the Dead 9) by Richard Murray Season 2 Book 3 Page B

at least I assumed it was pleased. For all I knew it could be annoyed. I had enough trouble discerning the emotions and facial expressions of humans, I doubted I’d be any better with a canine.
    Still, she had proven herself useful. A great deal more useful than my brother at least. I wondered idly if I should kill him when I made it back to the sanctuary. He had abandoned us and made my task of saving Lily that much more difficult. That deserved some form of punishment at least.
    “So what now?” Gregg asked as he looked back at me from where he leant against the railings. He’d been watching the zombies clamber over one another in their frenzied attempts to reach us.
    That same frenzy was what had ultimately saved us from having all of them climbing the stairs at the same time. Unlike living enemies who would go up the stairs one after another, the zombies pushed and shoved, even clawed their brethren in an attempt to reach us, such was their hunger.
    The result of that could be seen at the bottom of the stairwell where a bottleneck had been created, allowing just the occasional lucky few through the door to climb the steps and die at our hands.
    “Stay here and watch them, I’ll check out the rooms,” I said. “If too many start making their way up, call out and I’ll come back.”
    “Yeah sure thing, just leave me with all the undead,” Gregg muttered as I flashed a grin at him. I turned to the door to the second-floor rooms and paused. I glanced back at the dog who was watching me intently and I sighed.
    “Fine, you can come too.”
    Jinx fairly scampered over to my side as Gregg said something too low for me to hear and laughed. It was no doubt something he thought was funny but would be totally incomprehensible to me. I ignored it and set off to check the rooms.
    We’d done a cursory search earlier but that had been to check for any potential threats more than anything else. In our haste, we’d not gone through personal belongings in search of items that may be of use if getting us out of the building and while I doubted that I would find anything really useful, I was out of options.
    A quick but thorough search of the rooms that were open yielded little, though we would at least be able to change our clothes should the need arise. Besides the clothes, there were electronic devices such as phones, tablets, and laptops but none of those were any use at all.
    Books, magazines, a large quantity of pornography in one room that I could only assume belonged to someone who hadn’t discovered the internet and enough condoms to ensure no new children need ever be conceived until the zombies were all gone for good. Nothing of actual use though.
    I moved to the first closed door and turned the handle to find it locked. As expected. Still, these were student accommodation and the locks were on the doors more for privacy than any real security, so I leaned back and kicked with as much force as I could.
    The flimsy lock broke easily and the door swung inwards revealing a neat room with a single bed, wardrobe and small chest of drawers. Another quick search found much the same as the other rooms and I began to realise that perhaps my expectations were way higher than they should have been.
    For the next hour, I moved from room to room, breaking in and searching for anything of use as the light dimmed ever more. Before I finished, I had my flashlight to hand as I moved through the building. At least I had found plenty of batteries, so had no need to worry about being without light at a crucial moment.
    Gregg walked along the hallway as I left the final room and nodded amiably at me. “Anything useful?”
    “No,” I said and frowned. “Shouldn’t you be watching the stairs?”
    “Nah, a few more made it up and I finished them off. I managed to drop them over the railings on my own,” he gave me a slightly accusatory look and I shrugged. “Seems there’s enough down there now to stop any getting