Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

them, but it was bittersweet. On one hand, I was torn away from all that I knew at a young age, but on the other, I lived in fear of my father’s rage, so it was undoubtedly the right thing to do. I took a slap now and again when I got under his feet and despite me being a tiny dot, that shitball didn’t pull his blow. Open-handed or not, it knocks a six-year old senseless. I don’t recall that mother fucker ever crying an apology to me though.

I never saw them again, and I’m utterly blasé about their fate. I honestly don’t give two shits if they’re dead and gone. My father was a savage and my mother put him above me every single time. My early childhood was just screaming and fear.

Naturally, this led to me being something of a handful. I mean, shit, I had issues coming out my arse. Trust, abandonment, loneliness; you name it, I had it. I dealt with it by building walls around me and painting those walls with the snarky bitch I am today, with a mouth as fast as my feet.

I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’m no dipshit. I’m actually way smarter than I let on. Now, I’m no particle physicist and when I say smart, I don’t mean academic smart. If you ask me to do long division in my head, my expression will go blank and I’ll likely go catatonic, drool still hanging out my mouth an hour later, as my brain has ceased to function.

But reading was an escape for me, bouncing around between foster homes and group homes. I’d read anything as it was all an escape, whether it was reading some trashy romance novel, literary classics, pulp noir detective novels, comic books, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, thrillers… anything and everything. The evidence of my extensive reading is clearly evident to you, my dear reader, by my spectacular understanding and mangling of the English language for my own twisted purpose.

I’m also people smart. I don’t trust easily, but I’m generally good at reading people. Obviously, I’m not flawless, given my recent underestimation of Freya, but in my defence, my first impression was of the group as a whole and anyone who paid eight grand to sing Kum Ba Yah for a month had to be a bit of a fruit loop at first glance.

Sweeping generalisation duly thrown out the window. As of now, I love that girl. Whoever that footballer was who divorced her had no fucking clue what a superstar he had. She’s just bloody lovely in every way—inside and out—and I’m doubly impressed by the way she’s handled this whole clusterfuck.

I’d like to see a footballer rip back a zombie’s head and plunge a kitchen knife into its eye without a shred of hesitation. If they’re so much as nudged by another player, that bunch of tarts roll fifteen times on the ground, waving their arms in the air and screaming to high heaven like a sniper’s just put a high velocity round through their kneecap.

I’m pretty confident every professional footballer is dead. Fuckers have everything done for them and just aren’t equipped to survive the end of the world.

Tangent.

Anyway, my smart mouth is both my sword and my shield, and I don’t know many adults who enjoy being outsmarted by a ten-year old with a grasp of sarcasm way ahead of their time. Abstract concepts usually start getting grasped at around eleven or twelve I read somewhere, but I was snapping back at nine.

I was a problem, let’s leave it like that.

On top of reading, I discovered parkour from my endless fascination with YouTube and became obsessed with it. It was just so mesmerising, watching these men and women do breathtaking things, so elegant and strong, their movements so aesthetically graceful and fluid.

My life was so unbearably mundane, constantly moving about, always moving schools, never putting down roots. Reading let me escape in a quiet corner, but I wanted something that would set my heart racing and fell in love with extreme sports. BMX, skateboarding, base jumping, free diving, parkour… my heart would race just watching that shit on a screen and I wanted some of it. The closest I’d ever come to an extreme sport was trying to furiously finish my homework as the teacher was walking round the class collecting it from everyone. Whoo, what a rush.

My apparent absence of fear was both a blessing and curse during my early years. I’d try something way too advanced and bang the shit out of myself, ending up in A&E so many times I got to know some of the staff by name.

Naturally, being a free spirit as I was, I ended up in the wrong crowd. Fast forward to fifteen, I was pretty nimble and accomplished by this time, and I’d also started training in MMA, because boobs are way too interesting for teenage boys and in the circles I lived in, boundary issues were the norm. A broken instep, a kick in the balls so hard they’d have three Adam’s apples, and a fearless headbutt to the nose soon dissuaded anyone getting too touchy feely without my consent.

I became one of the lads. I stopped getting treated like someone they just wanted to bang when I proved myself to have more balls than the rest of them combined. Then I learned to steal cars.

Look, I’m not proud of how that shit went down these days. This was ten years ago, and I was fucked up, a kid just looking to find a place for herself in a world that had chewed me up, spat me out, and shat on me repeatedly.

Don’t feel sorry for me, dear reader. That’s not why I’m telling you this. I don’t want your sympathy. I just want you to understand who I was before I became who I am.

Stealing cars got me in the worst trouble of my life. It was a turning point for