Read Online All the Dead Are Here by Pete Bevan - Free Book Online

someone saying ‘Hmmm’ as if they were frowning in consternation.
    John regained a modicum of composure. “Where am I?” he asked to the room.
    “Excellent!” exclaimed Cadish. “You are not stuck. Looped in linear time! Communication can commence. Let us talk together/communicate in sporadic sound wave amplitudes.” John just blinked. “Would you like a seat?” said Cadish, emulating meat protocols he had observed.
    John nodded. Cadish thought this was wonderful. Normally, transferred creatures became angry or panicked and had to be returned to their prior location before they hurt themselves. This creature showed a higher function.
    John felt the ground beneath him move and stepped to one side. The pipework and blades below him seethed and writhed before rising out of the ground searching and feeling their way up to a height of about three feet. There was the sound of a thousand knives being sharpened as the rods flicked about, searching for something as if working out the best position to lay and for several seconds it flapped about ineffectually before finally settling into something that resembled a lopsided chair, or it would had there not been a nasty looking blade sticking up from the seat.
    John didn’t sit.
    “Oh sorry,” said Cadish and the offending blade flipped about as if searching for somewhere to hide, like a mouse caught by surprise in the corner of a shed with no immediate escape. Eventually, it forced its way under several other blades laying flat on the seat and nestled in as if getting comfortable. John sat down gingerly and the chair seemed solid enough.
    “Good, good,” said Cadish. “I cannot offer you food, energy, fuel, sustenance...”
    “Look. Where the hell am I?” asked John, trying to bring some sanity back to the situation.
    “I have created this aperture to maintain your current life state. You are several divisions of distance above your previous position. Divisions of distance, millimetres, yards, chains, inches, kilometres, miles. Yes, miles. You are several miles above your previous position. Look.”
    Two large rods folded out of the roof at one end of the room and an inky image coalesced between before forming an unbelievably high definition image of the Earth in 3D. The ruined Earth sparkled below John, it was so realistic, so beautiful and, with a sickening sensation, John realised he was in space.
    “What the... what are you?” exclaimed John.
    “I am Cadish,” said Cadish.
    “What’s a Cadish? A Computer? A ship? A robot? An Alien?” said John.
    “I am Cadish,” said Cadish. “I am not a PC, an ocean going vessel or an alien. Not to me, anyway.”
    “Well, what do you want with me?” he asked.
    “Good, good. Straight to business. No beating about the bush. Excellent,” said Cadish. “I need to enquire/ask/determine/assess/simulate/hypothesise/find out and torture several parameters with reference to the situation currently in progress through linear time on the surface of your home planet/homeworld.”
    “You want to ask me a question?” summarised John.
    “Yes,” said Cadish with uncommon brevity.
    John shrugged and, with no small measure of glee, Cadish realised this was the meat gesture for ‘go ahead’. The image on the screen morphed into a street view. Zombies were chewing on a fresh kill, savouring the dark meat of the liver of what looked like some poor teenager. A rod shot up from the floor with a ‘snick’ and stopped in front of the image.
    “What are these?” asked Cadish, tapping the screen with the blade pointer.
    “These are Zombies, Cadish. The living dead, eating the flesh of the living,” said John, sickened by what he saw.
    The physiological response of the meat creature confused Cadish. “Living Dead is an oxymoron, a conundrum. A paradox. Not… erm... right,” said Cadish.
    “The dead started rising up last night, they started attacking and eating people. I don’t know why, Cadish,” said John sadly, thinking