Free The Zombie Adventures of Sarah Bellum by Lisa Scullard

house for the last two weeks – possibly
recuperating and convalescing – until the motion sensors
detected his movements in the room just now."
    "How would he know
about the cameras?" I demand. "Do zombies have incredible
intuition?"
    Crispin shakes his head,
and moves the footage forward, one frame at a time. The zombie's head
turns, with slow precision, to look directly into camera – via
its reflection in the mirror.
    And it grins .
    "No," Crispin
says, grimly. "He knows about the cameras, because they are in
his bedroom."
    "His bedroom?"
My brain can't keep up.
    Is he sub-letting to
zombies as well?
    "It has always been
his bedroom," Crispin nods. "That is my brother…
Homer N. Dry."
    I have to grip the edge
of the console. My knees have handed in their notice, both at the
same time.
    Crispin continues to
stare impassively, at the grinning image of his brother's face on the
giant screen.
    He was experimenting on
his own family… his own flesh and blood …
    "Print me a hard
copy," he says at last, and the appropriate equipment hums into
life. "Right there."

CHAPTER
TWELVE :
    E.T. ~ HOMER LONE

    "Keep this," my
zombie host says, handing me the CCTV image, from the printer.
"Remember that face. He must come to no harm."
    "Of course," I
agree, studying the hard copy, before pocketing it. "He's your
brother…"
    "Not only that,"
Crispin interrupts. "He is the first zombie to respond –
at least partly – to treatment. He is thinking and plotting…
see how he concealed himself in the mansion? We must find him –
and ascertain how much of his faculties have recovered."
    "Sure," I
remark. I'm relieved. Perhaps now something else seems to be
effective, that rumour about virgins as medical therapy will finally
go away… it's not as if we're living in the Middle Ages.
Although by the behaviour of some of the men I know, you'd think it
still was.
    He gets to his feet,
starting to shamble back through the vast underground cavern.
    "Come, Sarah Bellummm ," he hails me, over his shoulder.
    "Yes," I
respond, but not before bending to retrieve the other piece of paper,
balled-up in the waste basket. Curiosity having got the better of me,
I unravel it, flattening out the creases, and turn it over.
    Oh.
    TAKE OUT TRASH.
    Well, that was an insight
that could have been left undisturbed. I toss the piece of paper into
the basket again, and head after him.
    "We must be
cautious, Sarah," he warns me, as we go back up the stone steps,
out of the deep echoing basement, and into the slightly less enormous
house. "My brother Homer has always been nervous in company. He
may go to great lengths, to maintain his privacy."
    "I can tell, by the
way he covered up the cameras in his room," I say, thoughtfully.
"Will he lock himself in there indefinitely, do you think?"
    "It is not his
ability to covert himself away that is of concern." Crispin
stops and turns to face me in the grand entrance hall, his hands on
my shoulders. Those fathomless black eyes seem to burrow into my
skull once more. "It is what he may do in order to protect his
concealment."
    I get a familiar chill in
my veins, at his words.
    "Is your brother
violent?" I dare to ask.
    Thoughts of my housemate,
Miss No-Knickers, and her ABH-on-legs boyfriend, Carvery Slaughter,
flit across my mind. I wonder if she's managed to keep all of her
stitches intact in the last few hours, in his company?
    "He is –
creative," Crispin Dry admits. "Stay close. If I give you
an order, or tell you to move, act immediately. Without question."
    Hmmm .
I can see where this might be open to abuse…
    "So long as you're
not just grabbing me to try and cop a feel," I say, pointedly
shifting slightly away from his hands, which seem to be heading for
the direction of buttons and buttonholes again. "I know all
about those guys who get reported on TV, for telling girls they're in
imaginary mortal danger – so they can be persuaded to hide in
the trunk of an unlicensed car, and be driven to cheap motels in