Free Zom-B by Darren Shan Page A

asks, bewildered.
    “We’d be better off if they took a dozen little Indians and dumped them in the Thames.” Dad laughs, like he’s only joking, but I know he’s genuinely angry.
    Mum frowns. “Don’t say things like that, Todd. It’s not funny. It’s not the poor baby’s fault it’s Indian.”
    “It’s not mine either, is it?” Dad snaps. He glares at Mum, then looks at me and grimaces. “I like that you tried to help, but if it had been an English kid…”
    “That’s outrageous,” Mum says frostily. “Babies are innocent. Would you have left the child to those two beasts?”
    “Nobody’s innocent,” Dad says. “It’s us against them. Always has been, always will be. If we start fighting their battles for them, where will it stop? Do we let them stay because they have cute babies? Keep on giving them benefits, so they can spit out more of the buggers, until they have enough to out-vote us? Babies grow up. They infest good schools and ruin them. They buy houses and destroy neighborhoods. They import drugs and sell them to our kids. They blow things up.
    “They were all babies once,” Dad says. “Every last terrorist and job-stealing scab was like that boy in the museum. We can’t be soft. We can’t give ground. Ever. ”
    “You’re wrong,” Mum says, and I think Dad’s even more amazed than I am. She’s never spoken to him like this before. I wouldn’t have thought that she could. “There are bad people in the world,Todd, white as well as colored. We can’t let people steal babies. We’d be cruel if we–”
    Dad’s hand shoots up and he slaps her, hard. Her head cracks back and she cries out. He grabs her throat and squeezes. His eyes are wild. I throw myself at him, roaring at him to stop. He hits me with his free hand, slaps me even harder than he slapped Mum. I’m knocked to the floor by the force of the blow, but Dad barely notices. He’s fully fixed on Mum.
    “Don’t ever talk to me that way,” Dad snarls. “I won’t have you turn on me. If you ever stick up for those bastards again, I’ll kill you. You hear me, woman? Do. You. Bloody. Well. Hear. Me?”
    He shakes her with every word. Mum makes a choking noise and tries to nod. Her fingers scratch at his arms. For a moment I think he’s gonna finish her off, that this is how it will end. All these years, all the beatings, all leading to this. I push myself to my feet, ready to lunge at him again, desperate to stop him, to save Mum, to escape with her before he can make good on his threat.
    But then Dad’s fingers relax and withdraw. He clutches Mum’s chin and gives her the evil eyeball. She’s weeping. Her nose is bleeding. The flesh under her left eye is already starting to puff up. Dad wipes blood from her lip and smiles tightly.
    “You’ll be all right,” he says as if she’d just tripped and hurt herself. “Go make us all a cuppa. Have a cig out back. You’ll be fine when you come in. Won’t you?”
    Mum gasps repeatedly like a dying fish. Dad’s fingers clench.
    “ Won’t you? ” he barks, sharper this time, wanting to hear an answer.
    “Yes… Todd,” Mum wheezes.
    Dad releases her. She gets up and stumbles to the kitchen, trying not to sob, knowing that if she makes too much noise it will infuriate him and maybe set him off again.
    Dad looks at me and I wait for him to follow up his first blow. If he lays into me, I’ll just stand here and let him beat me. It’s the best thing to do. He loses his head completely if I fight back. I don’t mind the beatings, the pain. As long as Mum’s out of the way and safe, he can hit me as hard as he likes.
    “I’ll say this, though,” Dad says slowly, then pauses, letting me know that he could swing either way right now, that he can laugh this off or come down hard on me, that he has the power, that me and Mum are his to control. “I wish I’d been there to see you knee that sod.”
    We both laugh, Dad loudly, me weakly. He switches channels to a quiz