Art by Ramon Sierra (Cocor)
1.
Somebody is out there making zombies, somebody with no respect for human life. Because of this guy there are hundreds of zombies roaming the city, lying crippled in the streets, stinking up the place and depressing everybody.
Nobody is happy about the situation. Imagine a family coming across the reanimated corpse of Grandma or Grandpa while out having a picnic in the park, a shambling, thin-skinned caricature of their elder loved one breathing flies and maggots all over their newfound memories, or a lover heading down to the local Very Convenience Variety Mart for a bag of cheese things, only to trip over the writhing body of their recently-buried love in one of the aisles. It’s not scary; it’s damn depressing is what it is. I can’t stand zombies: they’re useless, constant reminders of wasted potential in life, like homeless people and art students.
It’s not like in the old movies, where it’s a world-threatening epidemic, and every corpse that becomes a zombie gets a sudden hankering for brains. That I could handle. Real zombies are weak, brittle, decaying shells, mindless and tongueless, many of them barely even capable of walking. All they can do is complain in their dead language of moans, gurgles and hisses, and in that way they’re even worse than drug addicts. I keep comparing them to the dregs of society but that’s almost complimentary in terms of what they are.
It’s the 22nd of May and the year is 2038, which is the past, present or future, depending on when you read this. I’m Detective Disposable Archway, but most people call me Disposable; I’ve been put in charge of the investigation of the zombie outbreak because everybody else in the department is a coward. They’re all afraid of stumbling upon someone who they used to care about.
I, on the other hand, am used to facing such a thing on a nearly daily basis, as my ex-wife went from being a reliably compliant house mite to a dirty, streetwalking termite thanks to the mind-altering drug Roxy Music that flipped all of the wrong switches in the minds of a small, unsuspecting portion of the city’s populace. The drug had been slipped into the complimentary coffee machines in the lesser food chains of the city, and one sip of the free sample would destroy the life of not only the sipper but that of all those who personally knew them. Those who were poisoned by Roxy Music were either placed in insane asylums or forgotten about completely, though I’d be hard-pressed to point out the difference between the two.
I no longer refer to my ex-wife by her name, her maiden name, or any other names connected to her past for that matter, and instead call her Termite like everyone else. By ‘everyone else’ I mean her new prostitute friends. She is called Termite because of the way she feeds on wood. As her turf is the area surrounding the precinct, a dangerous area that attracts dangerous customers, I’m forced into her presence whenever I work late nights.
After my ex-wife had her brains reprogrammed I started working late as a means of pushing her out of my mind. I know I’m a fool. But because of this I have amassed a princely sum of chops, far exceeding the amount that even the zombie case requires, making me an anomaly in a precinct sans chops. I may sound bitter about it – and I am bitter about it – but most of my co-workers have never even busted a door down with their shoulders, or stopped a bullet with their teeth, and this makes it hard for me to look them in the eyes when they’re talking to me. The biggest complaint I have about my workplace is that it’s more about brains than brawn; it’s my belief that sometimes you need stupidity to get the job done. Of course, I take my job very seriously.
As of this writing there have been thirty-seven reported instances of zombie harassment. I have personally investigated each of them, speaking with the shaken victims and reading the offending zombies their rights. We keep the zombies locked up in a special smellproof section of our underground jail, where they’re free to decompose into a single rotting mass, something they’re prone to do whenever one comes into contact with another. On the other hand, the victims are given a pop, a pat on the back, and enough paperwork to last them a week, so I’m not sure who gets the rawer deal.
You never forget the look on someone’s face after they’ve seen their first zombie; their features droop and their eyes stare straight into nothingness, looking like their soul had just been pulled out of their body through their forehead. They never smile, not even at the absurdity of it all. When they speak, it’s almost always the same:
‘It was dead, but it was moving.’ ‘It was dead but it was alive.’ ‘Oh, my girlfriend.’ ‘Oh, my boyfriend.’ ‘Oh, my son.’ ‘Oh, my daughter.’ ‘Oh, my wife.’ ‘Oh, my husband.’ ‘Oh, my mother.’ ‘Oh, my father.’ And so on, until you’ve pieced together an extended family of zombies through the people you’ve spoken to.
These people never say ‘he’ or ‘she’ when they’re referring to the zombies, only ‘it’. It’s better that way, for all of us. Zombies are a frightening reminder of what happens to our bodies when we die. Nobody wants to know that their brain, the thing that houses their personality, their memories, their thoughts, their dreams – everything that makes them what they are – is the softest, most fragile thing in the world: a delicacy for bugs.
The victims will shower nonstop for a week or so, scrubbing so hard that they run the risk of scrubbing their skin off in an attempt to get the smell of zombie off of them. It’s the type of vomity stench that makes you want to throw up in turn, the unforgettable aroma of rotten meat and belched bile. I could go on for days, and have in my reports. It’s not a smell that’ll leave you anytime soon.
I’ve investigated the graveyards where the deceased were interred, and whoever dug them out did a good job of making it appear that the zombies exited the graves out of their own power: there are no shovel marks; no footprints; no clues left behind by a careless individual – only claw marks made by bony fingers and stomach-churning trails of flesh and pus. Oh, and a single hole in each coffin lid that corresponded to the holes found in each of the zombies.
My hypothesis is that the zombie creator hops the tombstones to his chosen destination, presses an abnormally long syringe into the earth, and injects the dead with a reanimating fluid. (The biggest flaw here is that we have not come across any unusual substances in the zombies outside of the expected ectoplasm.) He then digs out the soft earth with his own two hands – wearing latex gloves, of course – and removes the casket lid, allowing the newborn zombie to hull its frame out of the grave. The zombie creator then hops away while its creation is led by whatever cells of memory are left in its skull, seeking out its former family and friends and loves like an abandoned dog returning to the comfort of its home after a yearlong adventure.
That may sound silly, but it’s no less silly than those who believe there is no zombie creator; that the dead are coming back to life of their own will.
2.
Detective Disposable Archway turned up his collar as he exited the police station, entering the torrential downpour that gave infinite drops of life to the city streets; a school of yellow umbrellas passed by him as he turned down Toothpick Street. Colourful umbrellas bobbed along here and there like exotic fish, some with patterns, some in camouflage, and others held by neon handles. The detective’s coat quickly became a darker shade of beige as he pressed on through the rain, each corner on every street looking exactly the same.
It had been another late night of filing files, sharpening pencils and other self-imposed busywork Every time he saw his ex-wife in something he moved onto something else: he saw her indecipherable writing as he wrote out a character study, innocent and unpracticed, and so he moved onto microwaving his coffee, seeing her smile in the reflection of the door as she waited for the popcorn to pop. And then after all of this he would finally leave the station, playing Russian roulette with the streets he walked down, running the risk of bumping into Termite.
Because of the rain he did not notice her. On a clear night he would have noticed her from a mile away given her adherence to the dollymop dress code: she wore a short and mistreated fur coat; a red headband with white polka dots holding her unruly black hair in place; jeans like another layer of skin; a bracelet made up of giant red beads; thick red lipstick; and, to top it all off, the most tired eyes that Detective Disposable Archway had ever seen.
He noticed her but pretended he did not: Roxy Music had murdered the woman he had loved and replaced her with Termite, a woman who took advantage of the lax prostitution laws of Neo-Ontario to a flagrant degree. It pained him to look at her and see traces of his ex-wife, his ex-life, in that exploitative shell. He remembered every patch of her body; remembered candlelit nights poring over her pores, listening to the music of her giggling as he feathered his way around the territory of her skin, back when he was the only person who knew the true shape of her. That was when she guarded herself from strangers, proud of her modesty in a way that Disposable had only read about in old novels, making love and sex and sweat and saliva special again. Now she was a ride for anyone to put money into. She was dead to him.
She grabbed his arm.
‘Hey, Disposable! Disposable, right? I thought it was you! I hear you’re on the zombie case. Is that right? Come on, you can tell me – I’m a special friend to a good deal of guys in your little sty there; that little cop shop you have going on. They tell me things because I’m not a real person, so it doesn’t matter what they tell me. Hey, I’m kidding – that was a joke.’
‘I’m not in a mood for jokes,’ Disposable grumbled. ‘And I’m not in the mood for being touched, either, so please remove your hand before it gets cuffed.’
Her touch had shot shivers of memory up his spine, and when she loosened her grip the tingling sensation lingered for a few moments before dropping away. His emotions splintered off into every direction at once.
‘The guys all feel they can tell me anything, but I feel like I have nobody to tell nothing. But I have things that I do want to tell people, if only I knew anyone who would listen. I would never talk to a priest, though; I’m nice enough not to put a holy man into a situation like that. I know you’re an okay guy because you’re still standing there in the pouring rain listening to me blathering. I like the little talks we sometimes have out here at night, even if I don’t always understand them. You’re the only guy who’ll talk to me without taking me back to the Hotel2Mango for a little fun-loving.’
Disposable was not expecting to see tears rimming her eyes. Even the tough exterior of a Roxy Music victim can be cracked every once in a while.
‘I talk to you the same as I talk to all the girls,’ Disposable explained, ‘which is only to get information about what’s going on in the streets. I spend so long indoors, in my cramped office – sometimes I feel out of tune with the big bad city around me. The streets are all you know, aren’t they, so why not stop to chat it up every now and then?’
Termite shook her head. ‘Please, Detective, I have to tell you something. Can we go somewhere more . . . quiet?’
‘This is as quiet as it gets,’ Disposable murmured.
‘What?’
‘This is as quiet as it gets!’ Disposable shouted through the rain. ‘We’re basically standing on the front steps of the station. If you’re worried about attracting suspicion then talking to a detective where the detective works is the very definition of nothing-out-of-the-ordinary. If you were planning on taking me up to one of your seedy hotels then you have another thing coming.’
She smiled, closed her eyes and laughed, shaking the tears out of her eyes. ‘Ha ha! You’re so lewd!’
‘What on Earth-Seven are you talking about?
‘“If you were planning on taking me to one of your seedy hotels then you have another thing coming.” Ha ha! That’s usually the idea!’
Disposable hid one of his hands behind his back and tightened it into a fist, unbeknownst to Termite. He tried to pour all of his anger, frustration and sadness into that one fist, hoping to drain the feelings that were swimming maddeningly in his head. She had no idea how much she was hurting him, and somehow that made it even worse.
‘I have to get going,’ he said flatly.
‘Wait – this is important to me,’ Termite insisted. ‘I read the newspapers left in hotel rooms and they all say the zombies seek out people they know.’
For the first time since the Roxy Music incident, Detective Archway could detect uncertainty in Termite’s demeanour, a glimpse of a lost girl behind the façade of black clothing, blood-coloured jewelry and damaged fur. The precinct had come to an agreement with the more psychologically stable of the streetwalkers, wherein they would not be arrested so long as they provided officers and detectives with whatever incriminating information they came across; this agreement was made on the basis that there would be mutual respect between the two parties.
Detective Disposable Archway had to take this into consideration as he tried to decide whether or not he would hear out what his ex-wife’s evil twin had to say; causing bad blood between the hookers and cops would be enough to demote him, if not kick him out of the force completely. As his job was the only thing keeping him sane and grounded, he relented and lent an ear. Termite’s words ate through it like rotting wood.
‘Okay, so I haven’t told anyone about this yet, so you’re the first,’ she said, bringing her voice down to a confidential volume. ‘A couple days ago I actually came across a pair of zombies – not just one, but two, which I thought was pretty big at the time – and I thought: “Okay, cool, I get to see zombies; the girls are gonna love this.”. But then I realised I have absolutely no idea who these zombies are. I mean, I had no idea who they used to be, back when they were people like you and me. And I . . . I don’t want to say I was frightened, but I started thinking about people I know who have died, and . . . I don’t know anyone who has died. I can’t remember anyone except for the girls and the guys and the guy at the Very Convenience Variety Mart, the one with the funny looks. I don’t know what kind of drugs I could’ve taken that’d do this to me, but drugs are the only answer I can think of. I mean, when I try to remember stuff from way back when, like when I was a kid and stuff, it’s like a whole section of my brain just fell out the back of my head. I don’t like how that feels.’
Disposable was at a loss for words. His fist unfurled into a helpless claw.
‘I wouldn’t tell anyone else about this – I only told you because you’re a detective, and I was hoping you could figure it out for me.’
Of course he knew the answer, but he would never tell her it. ‘Where are the zombies?’ he asked. If his heart would not let him speak of anything else, it would let him speak of business. He would arrest the zombies for disrupting the peace and call in for somebody to pick them up; then he would go home, sleep, and forget anything had happened.
‘It was in an alley close-by, but I don’t know if they’re still there. I’ve been avoiding it.’
Disposable thought of how he had been avoiding her, and how both of their encounters had been inevitable. By the time their conversation ended the rain had let up, and Detective Disposable Archway had Termite lead him to the alley. He could smell the pungent foetor of wet zombie as soon as they reached the entrance.
Although the rain had technically stopped, rainwater was still stubbornly dripping down from awnings and windowsills and gutters, rhythmically hitting the detective’s jacket as he peered into the dank, dark alley. Without a word he stepped into it, leaving Termite behind, and he did not stop walking until he came across the pair of zombies that had harassed her. One of them was sitting with its back against the wall, one of its legs broken, the bone visible beneath its kneecap; the other was lying in a puddle of abnormal consistency and colour – a yellow puddle that could have been pudding – and it was trying to pull itself away from it but its ratty hands could do nothing but feather the cement. One wore thick black glasses and the other wore a red dress; one had been his ex-wife’s father and the other had been her mother. Detective Disposable Archway read them their rights and then he called in to the station to have somebody pick them up.
When he exited the alley he was breathing into his hand to get rid of the smell.
‘Did you find any clues?’ Termite asked. Her look of worry and self-doubt was almost touching, but Disposable chalked it up to self-preservation and not signs of the lingering remains of his ex-wife.
‘One had been a known trick and the other used to be a prostitute,’ Diposable said without missing a beat. ‘You were probably the only person they could think of when they came back to life – the last person they had seen who had meant something to them, however small – so they came to you. You should be thankful they weren’t people who had meant something to you, since that’s an experience not many can get over without a lot of drugs and therapy.’
‘I see,’ Termite said. It was clear she did not trust him completely, but Disposable knew she would not press him any further on the subject.
3.
Someone is going around beating up zombies. It’s the 1st of June, 2038, and because of the lack of headway in the zombie case I’ve been saddled with hunting down the Zombie Battler, as he’s known in the local media. I take issue with that name because it’s not like the zombies can fight back. Apparently all this guy does is go around punching zombies while somebody records it and uploads the videos anonymously to several prominent websites.
The Zombie Battler wears a mask in each video, a black and white lucha libre mask with stitched lips and hollow eyes; his physique makes it obvious he’s only a teenager, which explains why he chose opponents that have no chance of fighting back. With all I’ve written about the zombies I suppose I should be rooting for this guy, but it’s hard to root for a bully who is only out to exploit beings that had no choice in their current situation. Whenever I meet him I’ll be sure to give him a taste of his own poison.
I know I’ve been put on this case because nobody believes that somebody was behind the zombie outbreak. There’s no proof, they say, but I firmly believe that sometimes no proof can be proof enough. At the very least the case will remain open until it’s solved, and I do aim to solve it after I’ve put the Zombie Battler behind bars. The Zombie Battler leaves behind clues such as bootprints, one set from himself and the other from the cameraman; a distinctive mask that could only come from so many shops; audible grunts on the audio tracks of the videos; and of course the videos themselves. He’s just some punk kid who doesn’t care if he’s caught – in fact he’d more than likely prefer it, as it would cement his fifteen seconds of fame across message boards around the world.
Police brutality videos have grown popular as well, ever since police brutality was legalised three years ago, and I’ll make sure the Zombie Battler’s camera pal gets a good one for all of their little internet friends to see. I already have an idea of which neighbourhood the guy is in, so all I have to do is lay my trap, for which I’ll be borrowing a few zombies and a spare alleyway; all of the paperwork has already been filled out for it.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be visited by zombies, but it’s hard for me to think of anyone who could have loved me enough.
4.
The trap was set according to plan: Disposable signed for the release of his ex-wife’s former parents and escorted them to the alley, which had been more of a fight to get permission to use; disguised as a homeless person during the day he waited around the alleyway entrance and mentioned to any passing teenagers that there were ‘some of those rotten zombies in there. I sure wish somebody would do something about them.’ Once he was satisfied over the odds of one of the teenagers passing along the information to the Zombie Battler, Disposable staked out the alleyway from across the street, hidden beneath a pile of rags. He waited for night, when the Zombie Battler chose to record his beatings.
As Disposable waited all he could think about was Termite, no matter how hard he tried not to. He had chosen her undead parents for the bait as a means of destroying evidence, so that nobody would have Termite come in to identify the bodies once they checked the cemeteries and figured out whose they were; the most severe cases of insanity in Roxy Music victims stemmed from the overbearing clues of a previous life they had no memory of. He had promised himself not to think of her previous life, that beautiful dead thing, so when he destroyed evidence of her past he was doing it not only to protect her but himself as well.
The sound of excited whispering jolted him out of his reverie. The Zombie Battler had arrived with his cameraboy in tow, a nerdy looking kid in street clothes with the latest model of camera, while the Zombie Battler himself was in full comic book regalia, black mask and black trenchcoat, attempting to become one with the shadows as the shadows sniggered to his back.
Detective Archway peered through his rags at the hapless duo, watching as the Zombie Battler posed for the camera before disappearing into the black mouth of the alley; he waited until he heard the sound of flesh hitting tenuous flesh, followed by the low moans of abused zombies, before bursting out of the pile of rags and striding across the street.
He pulled his white matte gun out of his holster and his badge out of his pocket, holding both of them so the suspects would see the badge and the gun pointing at them at the same time. His footsteps, unmindful of stray pebbles and puddles, caught the attention of the cameraboy’s ears, and the cameraboy swung around to capture the image of an angry brick wall of a man coming towards him with unrelenting intent. Instead of calling out in warning to the Zombie Battler like any good sidekick would, the cameraboy merely clenched his teeth and waited for the inevitable.
Detective Disposable Archway punched the lens of the camera, ramming the other end into the cameraboy’s eye, and then asked if it still worked. The cameraboy nodded, and Diposable could see with great satisfaction that the kid’s eye was already turning purple. He read the kid his rights but would not arrest him right away.
‘You see this badge?’ he asked. ‘You know what it means?’
The kid nodded again.
‘Good. Now keep that camera rolling and I’ll let you get off with a lighter sentence than your buddy there.’ Which would happen anyway, of course – Disposable was not about to make an actual deal with some punk kid. ‘Try to run away and I can legally shoot you,’ the detective added, relishing this long overdue exercise of power. The kid gulped and his unsightly Adam’s apple rammed into his chin.
The detective turned from the kid and started for the depths of the alley, in which he could just barely make out the outline of the Zombie Battler battering his victims; the cameraboy’s camera would have to have been extremely powerful and extremely expensive in order to enhance the image with artificial lighting and contrast to such an extent that the footage was fully visible when uploaded to the web. For Detective Archway, rich kids who felt they were above the law were worse than poor kids who felt they were above the law, since rich kids tended to make the threat of Mommy and Daddy either suing the police or closing them down, laughable threats born from arrogance that not even police brutality could fix. At least the poor kids knew when to shut up, depending on how smart or sober they were.
There were exceptions, of course, like the cameraboy quaking in his boots behind him. Disposable knew that nothing was ever as clear-cut as he hoped.
The Zombie Battler was so engrossed in his violence that he did not notice the detective coming up behind him. When the Zombie Battler lifted his fist for a savage blow, Detective Archway grabbed it and wrenched the Zombie Battler around to face him, his badge and his gun. He decided he would only read the Zombie Battler his rights once the mask was off and the kid was naked and defeated. Detective Archway reached for the mask.
But the Zombie Battler shouted an expletive and tried to break free despite the threat of the firearm. Detective Archway used the gun to deliver a blow to the Zombie Battler’s skull, and as the Zombie Battler staggered around holding his head, Disposable grabbed hold of the back flap of his mask.
As he was lifting it off, a pale hand grabbed onto his gun, trying desperately but ineffectually to wrestle it away, and Detective Archway wheeled around to see the wild, furious look in the cameraboy’s eyes.
‘Stay away from my brother!’ the kid shouted, and smashed his state-of-the-art camera against Disposable’s head.
Stunned, Disposable let go of the gun and the kid grabbed it, lifted it and fired it into Disposable’s chest. The recoil knocked the kid against an alley wall, knocking him out, and Detective Archway skidded backwards towards the opposite wall, where he fell onto a moaning zombie, his ex-wife’s ex-father.
The Zombie Battler was trying to adjust his mask, as Disposable had pulled it up enough to obscure the Zombie Battler’s vision, but gave up and yanked it off completely instead. Detective Archway was shocked by what he saw: a bland, forgettable face. The mask had done more than hide his identity, it had given him one. The real Zombie Battler was not scarred, overly pimply, particularly ugly or particularly pretty; he was just another interchangeable high school kid you see milling about outside of school or waiting at a bus stop.
‘You could be anyone,’ Disposable gasped, and then when he realised he was dying, he tried to say something more personal, meaningful, but his mouth seemed to have stopped working and he could already feel his body slumping against the side of a garbage bin. Disappointed with his final words, Detective Disposable Archway fell into darkness.
5.
The afterlife is overcrowded. That’s what I was told upon entering this realm, anyway. Dying was like falling asleep and waking up as a glowing ball of white light. Everything else here is white as well, so it’s impossible to tell where you are in relation to anything else; it’s like being part of the same being or construction, only every tiny fragment has its own consciousness.
There are nearly as many animals as there are humans, and some of them are dinosaurs, but I only know this because of the telepathic images they send out. It’s how we all communicate here. Knowing everybody’s thoughts, being part of the same omniscient construction, is the loneliest thing in the world: after a while there is no longer any semblance of self, only that of an ultimate schizophrenic self floating aimlessly in space.
So when they told me that the afterlife is overcrowded and that those whose bodies were still intact were allowed to return to Earth, I jumped at the chance. I want to be unique again, to be shielded from the intimate thoughts of others. Now I’m being passed out of the being like an unwanted bowel movement, popping out of whiteness and reentering the blackness I had fallen into when I died, only this time I’ve retained my consciousness.
This blackness is rather musty. I hear a strange wheezing sound and discover it’s my own breathing. I lift a hand and touch some kind of smooth surface in front of me. I realise I’m lying down. I feel something sliding out of my stomach, followed by a steady stream of dirt pouring onto me. Then there is a scratching sound and I can see dark blue light coming out of the small hole in front of my stomach. The surface in front of me is pulled up and I can see the stars, so many stars, and they remind me of when I was part of that great self-centred being in the sky. I also see a strange man perched on top of a grey stone, a man I have never seen before, and he is holding the longest syringe I have ever seen in my two lives. He grins at me before bouncing away, hopping from tombstone to tombstone, leaving not a single trace of his existence behind except for the hole in the coffin lid and in my stomach. Perhaps it had been ectoplasm in that syringe all along. I’ll have to write a report on it when I get back to the station.
As I try to rise from the grave I feel the better half of my brains collapsing into mush.
6.
Termite was on her way home – home being someplace, anyplace to crash – when she came across the reanimated remains of somebody familiar to her. From the bulk of the corpse, the badges and medals sewn to its muddied uniform, and the resigned look on the decomposing face, Termite could tell right away that the zombie had been Detective Disposable Archway. She wondered if it was on its way to its wife or child or best friend, somebody who had meant something to it, when the zombie halted in its shambling tracks upon recognising her. It hissed excitedly, and then was silent.
Termite wondered if the wistful emotions the zombie seemed to be exuding were a figment of her imagination, in the same way people attributed emotions to cats and dogs. When she began walking again, the zombie moved in front of her, stopping her, and she was forced to look directly into the sockets where its eyes should be. She felt a pang of guilt for forgetting how long the detective must have been dead for.
‘Listen, I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you can understand me, but I think you have the wrong person; I’m not the person you should be looking for. I’m sure whoever that person is will be glad to see you . . . Okay, I’m lying through my teeth here. Whoever means the most to you is probably the last person who’ll wanna see you. I mean, you’re dead. What can you do now? If I had known you better then I’d probably be crying now, or if you weren’t so gross-looking then I’d probably hug you. I don’t know. Right now I don’t even know what I feel. Maybe I’m touched you chose to meet me instead of somebody else, who could’ve been anybody else, but I think maybe it’s just how you told me before you died, when I took you to the zombies: that I was just the last person who meant the most to you before you went, since you spent all day and all night cramped up in your little pigpen, and then when you left some nights we’d see each other and talk and it was awkward cop talk but it was sweet as well, and I don’t even know why it was sweet. Sometimes I even thought there could’ve been something between us, but then I’d see that wedding ring on your finger and backed off. The last thing I want to do is upset a pig in heat! But here you are, and I think I’m touched. I’m probably the only person who could be made happy by a zombie of all things!
‘You know, I’d shake your hand but I’m worried it’ll come off. I guess this is goodbye, Detective Disposable Archway.’
The zombie stood unmoving like a statue made of rotting flesh. Zombies were speechless in general but somehow this one made its speechlessness more pronounced; it was awkward and unexpected, just like the encounters Disposable had had with Termite.
Then the zombie moaned, breaking the spell. Termite smiled a kind and fragile smile before continuing on her way, hips swaying, her jewelry reflecting the moonlight; for the first time ever, at least according to her faulty memory, she felt loved, and it was enough to give her hope for the future, a future not merely a repeat of the past or present but completely new.
She decided that the first thing she would do when she woke up, depending on how decent a time it was, would be to look up Detective Disposable’s wife and pay her respects to her.