Zombie Society - They Live Among Us (3 page)

It Begins

On the ninth floor of the future Titan building, men grafted; welding iron, banging nails, installing pipes, placing wires in walls. John took a step back and surveyed the scene, the task at hand, the fun, his workers. He loved everything about construction. He grabbed the plans and unrolled them on a table, weighing the edges down with coffee cups. Then the quick pattering of feet stole his attention. The entire team was rushing toward the edge of the ninth floor.

“What the heck?” He hastened to join them and found a spot next to Fergus. “What’s going on?” Ah, no answer required.

Several news crews waited by the prison gates. Small crowds had also gathered in clusters on the opposite side of the street in anticipation for midday.

Fergus checked his watch, “11:59.”

John could already see the zombies exiting from the inner gates of the prison and converging in a dense yet haphazard mass in the yard. More than one stumbled over the bench press before clawing themselves back to their feet. John squinted his eyes, concentrating on their clothing. They were all fashionably dressed, most in designer gear, even if many had already sustained rips and tears, and they hadn’t even left the prison yet. They were escorted closer to the outer gates by several guards. John divided them up into four even segments, then divided that segment by half again and counted them. Seventy five, which he multiplied by eight giving a good estimate of the total number of zombies which were about to be unleashed on Boston; just one city in one state in America. “Once they open those gates they’ll never leave voluntarily.” John muttered to himself.

John scanned across his employees for their reactions. They rubbed the backs of their necks, fiddled with cuffs and shook their heads. Nobody wanted this, nobody asked for this but they were getting it and not a single logical reason had been put forth as to why – All except for ‘
it’s the right thing to do
.’

The zombies stood lopsided by the front gate, some swaying from side to side as the guard nearest spoke to someone through a walkie-talkie and checked his watch. It was midday.

The gates slowly opened outwards.

Nothing for a few seconds.

Then the first zombie emerged through the threshold and onto the street. The collective gasp and step backwards from below resounded even on the ninth floor.

They shuffled, slowly but with a kind of herd mentality as though they were all thinking the same thing – Humans.

The cameras rolled and one female reporter dared get close to the horde before thinking again and heading back to the safety of her crew. The crowd shifted back as one and then the lead zombie was shambling straight for the nearest trash can. He tried removing the lid, but it was padlocked, not that such a minor hindrance stopped his attempts.

More zombies stumbled through the gates as people below filmed on their cells. The zombies were of all ages and roughly a fifty/fifty gender split.

That damn breeze cut another path through the street before drifting upwards. John clenched his jaw tight as others clutched rags to their faces. Even Fergus held a hand over his nose.

Several zombies began chasing after pigeons, one with success as he grabbed a hold of it and crammed the bird in his mouth. Then another shifted towards a dog on its leash, the owner, along with the crowd, moving back as a collective.

Then the entire street swarmed with them, several entering the small deli on the corner, more following, some tripping over the one in front.

An old lady moved along the front of the crowd, shopping bags in hand, and three zombies went straight for her, pulling at the bags and snapping the cloth handles, groceries spilling out onto the street. Milk exploded on the asphalt, oranges rolled into the gutter, but it was the raw meat they went for, devouring several packs of ham straight from the plastic.

John ran a hand through his hair. “Fucking zombies.”

“Hey, you know you can’t call them the
z
word.” Fergus reproached him, “at least not unless you want to end up in prison, lose your business, your family, your entire livelihood.”

“Yeah, I know that, sorry.” It was frustrating and John had just needed to vent. How much thought had the government really put into this? It was only a few weeks ago the media was referring to them as
risen again post expirations
, until somebody pointed out the acronym. Doubtless some wise guy lost their job over that one. “Why
morts
anyway? Where did that word come from?”

Fergus chewed on his bottom lip. “I think it’s a state of
being
. Your mort status is either alive or dead. Mortem is Latin for
death
– Look man, as long as you don’t use the
z
word, you’ll be ok.” Fergus continued, “we’re a liberal town man and you need to start showing some love.” He explained, as though reading from a script, “It’s just their culture. It’s these cultural differences that’ll make our society so enriched.” He said, pointing down at a mort as it stole a child’s Twinkie.

“Well I guess I could take a little cultural enrichment. But these things’ll only multiply.” John rubbed his face, massaging the muscles beneath the skin. “Maybe you’ll feel different when they outnumber us.”

Fergus sniffed, “I think we’ll be dead by then, John, it’s really not our problem.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” John thought about his children.

*

The family gathered around the TV to watch a documentary on the Discovery Channel. John’s eyes glazed over for a few minutes before he came out of his daydream and regained focus.

Kerry leant on John, ignoring the TV as she read a book, while Finn and Shannon sat over on the smaller couch to the side. It was these quiet moments with the family that John cherished.

The documentary, entitled
History of the Dead
began playing the kind of music you’d expect to hear in a horror movie when the crazy guy in a mask was creeping up behind the damsel in distress. The images showed a funeral processions and coffins being lowered into the ground. It was as though they were subtly trying to send the message that humans mistreated the dead by giving proper burials. “
For thousands of years, humans have discriminated against morts by plunging them deep into the ground in air-tight containers before covering them in earth. In some extreme cases, morts have even been incinerated and their ashes sprinkled in oceans and other places of so-called beauty.”
The commentary then confirmed John’s suspicions.

The images cut to a dead body on a slab, a man in a white coat stood over it clutching a scalpel. “
More recently, autopsies have been held, most commonly on victims of crime but also on those morts that died from causes unknown.”
The scalpel sliced down the length of the corpse’s chest as the music intensified.

The next showed a reconstruction of a mortician unzipping a body bag, followed by his pants as the screen went dark, leaving what happened next to the viewer’s imagination.

Then it cut to a woman, her eyes puffy and red, “
The way humans have treated the dead for so long is…is…is criminal, it’s nothing short of mortism by hate filled humans. This hate, this extremism, this mortism has to stop. Humans must atone for their past evils and usher in a new era of tolerance
.”

John stood and turned off the TV. “Am I the only one who thinks this is insane?”

“Dad, turn it back on.” Shannon reached for the remote in John’s hand, which he duly gave over.

The heat washed over him. “I think I need to take a walk.”

Back To School

Today was the day – It was Finn’s first day at Wellesley High School, one of the top performing public schools in the entire country. Having failed to break into the football team in middle school, Finn aimed to make it this year. He’d packed on the pounds and spent much of the summer training hard in the local park.

Finn filed into the assembly hall amidst the other students as they filled the seats from the front closest to the podium. He looked around and nodded to the familiar faces from his last school. Kids were making polite conversation mixed with nervous laughter. Some tapped their feet against the polished wood tiled floor – At least Finn wasn’t the only nervous kid there today.

He swiveled his head round to the back, looking at the rows of empty seats, but thought no more of it. Then the teachers entered and the noise gradually died down.

“That your mom?” Declan pointed to the tall redhead, the history teacher, otherwise known as Mrs Quinn.

Finn took a large breath and nodded. “Don’t give me a hard time over it, ok?”

Declan held up his hands, “hey – She’s hot!”

Finn watched from the corner of his eye as his mom took a seat at the side of the hall.

Principal Blitzer entered from the stage and welcomed the ninth grade to the school. He continued, “you are a very special year group, as you’ll be the first kids in the history of Wellesley High to be learning side by side with morts.”

A collective silence washed over the assembly. It was like the air had been sucked out of the kid’s lungs. How was it possible for morts to be studying at Wellesley High? All the free homes they’d been given were in the poorer areas of the city. Shouldn’t the mort kids be going to school closer to those areas? It just made more sense.

Principal Blitzer straightened, dipped his eyebrows and spoke in a more rash tone. “You will make your new friends feel welcome.” He looked to the side, at the main doors and nodded.

Finn tilted his chin up as the double doors swung inwards with a thud.

Nothing for a few seconds.

Then the first morts emerged, shuffling into the assembly hall. Their uniforms pristine, yet somehow crumpled at the same time. The first mort dragged his leg along the floor, his pale skin flecked with red gashes – A car crash victim? The next, a female and even paler than the first had no visible wounds, other than the look of permanent displeasure upon her countenance – Drowning?

They continued to enter, some pushing others aside as they stumbled toward the back of the hall toward the spare seats. Overall, Finn counted thirty, which would encompass around one in every ten of the year group. Where the heck did they all come from?

Then the stench hit – A dirty, musky, rotten stench you’d expect only a grave robber would enjoy. The male morts ogled the human girls, some salivating down their uniforms before taking seats at the back.

“Zombie freaks.” One kid yelled from the other side of the hall.

Principal Blitzer clocked him and pointed with a finger. “Out!” He watched as the boy stood and made his way out the hall, eyes fixed to the floor. “You can expect a detention tonight. Wait outside my office young man.” He turned back to the assembly and kept the same harsh tone, “the next pupil who tries anything like that will face expulsion and a black mark on his permanent record that will follow you around for the rest of your life. I’ll also see to it that you’re sent to a re-education camp – You got that?”

Finn, along with the rest of the wide eyed kids nodded their heads in compliance.

*

He knew it before the lab partners were even assigned. It was always his luck. Finn was partnered with Mortimer Jones, a victim of an electrocution who never shut up about how mortist electricity was.

“If you don’t like electricity then just stay away from it.” Finn told him, doubting his advice would be heeded. He remembered falling from a tree when he was nine, breaking his arm. After that he stopped climbing trees.

Even now, Mortimer on the other hand was using a pair of scissors to jab at the centrifuge, a human invention that he obviously despised, yet couldn’t leave alone.

“Electricity be mortist.” He spat, glancing over Finns neck as he finally put the scissors down, only to pick up a glass bottle filled with some colorless acid. His body swayed as he tried reading the label before, after a few seconds, he gave up and dropped the bottle into the sink.

Finn saw the flash as the basin shattered into a million fragments.

*

Kerry looked over her grade 9 history class. Only three morts this morning, so it would be a nice and easy learning curve before the afternoon’s class which contained considerably more.

She scanned down the register at their names; Morton Baines, Mortimer Jones and Mortinez Smith. They all looked kind of similar, with their sickly grey green withered skin and that dead-eyed expression that screamed they had absolutely no interest in learning about the great depression of 1929.

The morts all sat together at the back. A number of the human kids in front had shifted their desks further forward, doubtless to escape the putrid stench of death. It did no good though – Kerry easily smelt them and she was further away than anybody.

She held a closed fist to her mouth and coughed. “You three,” she pointed to the morts, “how about we switch you around.” The guidelines stated the mort kids were supposed to be integrated with the humans and that wouldn’t happen if they all sat clumped together at the back.

No response from the morts. They just continued sitting there, staring blankly forward, that same look of pure hatred in their eyes as though all they wanted was to chew her flesh, or the flesh of their human classmates. Green tinted drool spilled down the chin of one, which one, Kerry couldn’t tell. Had they even understood her? “Morton, Mortimer and Mortinez, could you please switch with…”

…They shot to their feet in unison and banged down hard on the desk, seething from the nose, “we heard,” the middle mort, with a stump for a leg said.

“Well then…” Kerry held out an opened hand, gesturing to three empty seats in the center.

They shuffled forward, scraping their feet along the ground as they did, staring lust at the necks of the female human students. Kerry swallowed and glanced over at Finn who sat at the front, slightly off to the side.

“Ok then, we’ll be making a start today on the…” Kerry paused, squinting her eyes at the text. Why the heck were they learning this? Had they changed the program over the holidays? “…second cholera epidemic.” Sure it was an event in history, but whether it was worthy of teaching the ninth grade was open to opinion.

Kerry read the text and answered questions from pupils as she went along. She noted how the morts seemed more interested in the necks of female students and muttering to themselves under their breaths than in how cholera was brought to the Americas through various shipping routes. That however soon changed as the lesson progressed to the numbers of dead and how there’d been so many bodies that they were piled upon each other in the fields and set alight.

At that point the morts perked up, stared holes of rage through their human classmates as though desiring only the most ugly kind of revenge for past crimes. The poor human kids shrank back in their seats, making themselves small. At least three of them turned to the morts and mouthed an apology for the crimes of their ancestors, even though they had literally nothing to do with it.

Not that the apology appeased the morts. Two of them spat red bile onto the desks in front.

Kerry handed out the tests and returned to her desk. Then during the next hour she spent some time analyzing the plans for the terms remaining lessons. Small pox, yellow fever, Spanish flu and polio were all covered. She swallowed again and felt the lump in her throat. At this rate, the mort kids would be so enraged at their human classmates for past crimes that she feared they’d be targeted in the playground. She glanced over at Finn as he worked, her eyes softening.

Then Finn finished, placed down his pen and sat back. Within a few minutes the rest of the class had also finished despite there still being another thirty minutes of test time remaining. Only the morts still stared down at their papers, one chewing through the end of his pen.

After the allotted time, Kerry collected the papers and dismissed the class for lunch. She finished marking the tests of the human students and puffed out her cheeks. Every last human had scored in excess of ninety percent. Sure, the tests had been dumbed down to accommodate the morts, but even this was surprising. The three mort tests at the bottom of the stack needed carefully separating from the green tinted bile that smudged the papers and stuck them together. Alas, this green tinted bile encompassed the entire range of answers the morts had given. Not a single question had been answered correctly, indeed not a single question had been attempted.

Kerry took out her red pen and wrote ‘
C-
‘ on each paper. She was under strict instructions to look favorably upon each mort. She exhaled and joked, “at this rate, they’ll soon be Harvard graduates.”