RISE OF THE ZOMPIRES prologue Sometimes, especially in the summer when the days are long and we have to stay in our coffins for hours, I wake up. Even through my tightly-sealed casket and the walls of the cellar, I think I can hear kids playing outside. I imagine them running around on the grass, kicking balls, squealing and squinting against the brightness of the sun. There’s the sound of splashing too, I’m sure of it, and I see boys and girls in my head: a group of them, paddling down at the wharf. They’re on the ramp where the boats go in, throwing water at one another to cool off, or just to make each other laugh. It’s at times like that I want to throw open the lid of my coffin and run outside. It would almost be worth it: two, maybe three seconds of the sun on my skin again before I explode. It’d be quick, at least; not hurt that much. Would it?
chapter 1 I used to be claustrophobic, when I was alive. But now, looking down at the coffin that has become my home, I can hardly remember that feeling of panic that would have made me properly freak just at the thought of spending all day stuck inside it. The room it’s in is big enough: a damp cellar below one of those tall Georgian houses in Redcliffe Parade that looks over the wharf. The cellar has a little broken window at street level, covered with dusty cobwebs, and it smells of mushrooms and mould, but would once have been quite
123