Chapter Text
You are dead, but it’s not so bad. You’ve learned to live with it. You don’t have a name anymore. Hardly any of the Dead do. You lose them like hair ties, forget them like answers to exams. Yours might have started with a ‘B’. The irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can’t smile, because your lips have rotted off.
None of the Dead are particularly attractive, but death has been kinder to you than some. You’re still in the early stages of decay. Just the pale gray skin, the unpleasant smell, the dark circles under your eyes. Your hair needed brushing but you don’t have the right motor functions to even attempt it. You could almost pass for a living woman in need of a vacation and a bath.
Before you became a zombie, you must have been a young woman who just moved to New York, or a college student because you’re wearing fairly nice clothes and seem to be in your early twenties.
You like to joke and speculate about your fellow Dead’s clothes since these final fashion choices are the only indication of who they were before you became no one. He was a punk. She did ballet. What more can you say?
Some are less obvious than yours. So you make random guesses. You were a work-at-home virtual assistant. You were a dog walker. Did that ring any bells?
It never does.
No one you know has any specific memories. Just a vague, vestigial knowledge of a world long gone. Faint impressions of past lives that linger like phantom limbs. You recognize civilization, places, and general overviews but you have no personal role in it. No history. You can tell the time based on the sun’s position, can tell directions, but you can’t read. None of you can read. Even those Dead who wore name tags can’t tell what their names are.
You and the others are just here. All of you do what zombies do.
Time passes, and no one asks questions. But again, it’s not so bad. You no longer feel physical pain except pangs of hunger. The new hunger is a strange feeling. You don’t feel it in your stomach. Some of the zombies don’t even have those. You feel it everywhere equally. A sinking, sagging sensation, as though your cells are deflating.
You may appear mindless, but you aren’t. The rusty cogs of cogency still spin, just geared down and down till the outer motion is barely visible. You grunt and groan, you shrug and nod, and sometimes a few words slip out. It’s not that different from before. But it does make you sad that you’ve forgotten your name.
Out of everything, this seems to her the most tragic. You miss your name and you mourn for everyone else’s because you’d like to love them, but you don’t know who they are. There are hundreds of you living in the abandoned New York mall. You reckon you were on a shopping spree before you died. After all, you did wake up here. But that’s presumptuous of you. If you were among the plenty who died during a zombie attack, then you wouldn’t be wound or bite-free. You could have been sick and infected somewhere else and you didn’t know you were carrying the disease and you were just in the mall then collapsed, died, and became a zombie.
You think you’re relatively new due to the indication of your freshness as a corpse. You still have all your flesh, but others are little more than skeletons with clinging bits, dry as jerky. Somehow it still extends and contracts and they keep moving.
Since you died in a mall, you stayed. You don’t need shelter or warmth, obviously, but you like having the walls and roofs over your head. Otherwise, you’d just be wandering in an open field of dust somewhere, and that would be strangely horrific.
This gives you a little fear from the uncertainty. To have nothing at all around you, nothing to touch or look at, no hard lines whatsoever, just you and the gaping maw of the sky. You imagine that’s what being full-dead is like. An emptiness that is so vast and absolute.
But living on a farm isn’t so bad. You can take care of the animals that could attract the Living. And you prefer human flesh to animal flesh. The old food does nothing to quench your hunger anymore. Even bright red meat from a freshly killed rabbit or deer is beneath your culinary standards. Its energy is simply incompatible, like trying to run a computer on diesel.
There is no easy way out, no humane alternative for the fashionably moral. The new hunger demands sacrifice. It demands human suffering as the price for pleasure, meager and cheap as they are.
But, could you even take care of animals? Isn’t that easy? Pigs and chickens just need food and water, right?
Last winter, when so many Living joined the Dead and your prey became scarce, you watched some of your zombie friends become full-dead. The transition was undramatic. They just slowed down, then stopped, and after a while, you realized they were truly dead. It disquieted you at first, but it’s against etiquette to notice when one of the Dead dies. You distracted yourself with some groaning
So maybe you don’t get to live forever. And yet the future is as blurry to you as the past. Death has relaxed you but not from your thoughts.
You came out of your musing when a horde approached you. One of the zombies opened his ragged mouth, oozing black drool. He points in a vague direction and grunts: “City.”
It’s time to feed again.
You nod and follow them. They were going out to find food. One thing you love about your community is that when the hunt is successful, those who hadn’t joined will be brought leftovers. You prefer calling it takeout. Last week, the hunting party brought three mostly intact men, a few meaty arms, and a dismembered torso. All still warm. And the Dead who weren’t able to hunt fall on them and feast right there on the floor like hungry cats around four in the morning.
Zombie children eat first because they are helpless on their own, then zombies with disabilities come next.
When the hunting party has enough members, you all shuffle towards town. It’s not hard to find recruits for these expeditions, even if no one is hungry. Focused thought is a rare occurrence, and you all follow it when it manifests. Otherwise, you’d just be standing around and groaning all day. And you do a lot of that.
The area where you do your hunting is conveniently close. Thanks to being in a hotspot where the Living often come to raid. You think the world has mostly ended because the city was as rotten as you are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. You don’t know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just the Dead replacing the Living? You guess it’s not so important. Once you’ve arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.
But finally, you sense prey. They all hovered near the pharmacy building. The life scent electrifies your brain, abrupt and intense. It hits you deeper inside, near your brain. They are very close, and there are a lot of them. More than your own number.
Everybody hesitated, stumbling to a halt. You looked at your small group, then back at the leader.
“No,” you grunt.
“Eat,” he insisted, pointing towards the area emitting the aroma like a cartoon tendril scent of cheese beckoning for Jerry to come.
You shook your head. “Too . . . many.”
“EAT!”
The rest of them are undecided. Some of them also sniff warily, but others are more single-minded like their leader. They groan and drool and snap their teeth. Their leader was getting agitated.
“Need it!” he shouts, glaring at you. “Come . . . on.” He turns and starts speed-lumbering towards the rundown pharmacy.
The rest of the group reflexively follows, igniting the focused thought.
You catch up and walk beside them, watching them with an uneasy grimace. Encouraged to an unusual level of intensity by their desperate energy, your group crashes through the broken windows and rushes down the dark hallways with almost empty rows.
The Living got taken by surprise. One of them shouts the alarm and you hear guns cocking, but you and the others don’t hesitate. You grunt when you see how many there are, but tag-teamed with another female zombie. You lunge at the nearest guy and grab his arms while she rips out his throat. The sparkle of life sprays out of his cells like citrus from an orange peel, and she sucks it in. The burning red taste of blood floods her mouth and you can see the moment where the panic in the guy’s eyes filled the dead girl with life.
You didn’t get a bite from the guy, wary for anyone about to shoot at you and your friend. The darkness of the room is pulsing with gunfire, and by your standards, you are grossly outnumbered. Survivors or Raiders don’t tend to travel in more than 20 members and if they do, they are usually the military. But something is tipping things in your favor.
They aren't seasoned veterans. They are young. Males. All of them are badly in need of a shave. It’s one of the perks of being Dead, another thing you don’t have to worry about anymore. Hair, toenails . . . no more fighting biology. Wild bodies have finally been tamed.
And their guns didn’t have any silencers. It attracted more zombies than the initial party that came along with it.
Slow and clumsy but with unswerving commitment, you and the rest continue to launch yourselves at the Living. Shotgun blasts fill the dusty air with gunpowder and gore. Black blood spatters the walls. The loss of an arm, a leg, a portion of the torso, is disregarded, shrugged off. A minor cosmetic issue. But some take shots to their brains, and they drop. There’s still something of value in that withered gray sponge, because if you lose it, then you are truly dead. The zombies to your left and right hit the ground with moist thuds. But there are plenty. You are overwhelming. You set upon the Living, and you eat.
“Carter! We’re trapped!”
“No shit, Ford! Barricade the windows and keep shooting!” Carter shouted panicked commands to his men. Their leader is a young man with a football shirt, standing on top of a barricade recently created in the corner of the room. As the Living fall to the floor under the weight of our hunger, this guy leans protectively over two small figures crouching below him. Two blonde girls. One in pink and one in green.
One of your fellow zombies pulls his feet out from under him and he falls, cracking his head on the edge of the shelf.
Without any fierce protectors, you lope across the room and grab the shoulder of the blonde in green. Eating is not a pleasant business. Without hesitation, you pounce on her and bite through her shoulder and you hate it. You hate her screams because you don’t like pain.
You don’t like hurting people, but this is the world now. This is what you do. Of course, if you don’t eat all of her, if you spare her brain, she’ll rise and follow you back to the mall. That might make you feel better. You’ll introduce her to everyone, and maybe you’ll stand around and groan for a while. It’s hard to say what friends are anymore, but that might be close.
If you restrain yourself, if you leave enough, you can be her friend. But you don’t.
You can’t.
There’s a high chance she will still hate you and kill you. Dead on Dead violence is a thing as much as Living on Living violence.
As always, you go straight for the good part, the part that makes your head light up like a movie. You dig your fingers into the crack in her skull and pry her head open like an eggshell. Her brain pulses hot and pink inside. You take a deep, wide, ravenous bite and—
You are Chloe St. James, the middlest-child to ever middle child growing up in elite society. And the two things you ever cared about in this world are dancing and your best friend—Poppy Min-Sinclair.
Just one bite of Chloe’s brain, you have memories. Flashes of dances, parties, clothes. Life.
You are seven, and you noticed your parents don’t give you any attention compared to your older sisters who are overachievers.
You are 12 and found passion in dancing. Your parents enrolled you to dance classes but they didn’t show up in any of your performances. They are busy taking care of your sick younger sister and babying your only brother.
You are 19, a freshman at Belvoire University gazing out the quad, searching for clubs and organizations to find where to belong. Sunlight drifts down through the trees, listening to a sorority girl sell the idea of The Greek life to beautiful and rich women and trying not to stare at the beautiful Asian girl standing next to you. She has bleached her hair blonde and has styled her hair in a way that looked like cotton candy and brown eyes that dance with private amusement.
She gives a smile when she feels your gaze on her. “Hi, you must be Chloe St. James.”
“You—you know who I am?”
“Duh! I’ve heard of you from Mommy when Daddy invited the St. Jameses around for whatever charity event he was running. How come you weren’t there?” she pouted.
Your gaze traveled to her pink lip-glossed lips, then you had to remember she asked you a question. “Oh… uh… my parents thought that I shouldn’t.”
“And why is that?”
You shrugged. You weren’t in the mood to share your middle child syndrome woes and prefer to daydream about writing that Destiel and post it on Stumblr soon.
Her eyes glittered. “That’s alright, you’re here now. I’m Poppy Min-Sinclair.”
“Poppy Min-Sinclair? The Min-Sinclair heiress!”
She grinned, showing her perfectly straight teeth “The one and only! It is nice to meet you, Chloe.”
Right after that, the two of you became the bests of friends. Even when your reputation tanked when you decided to wear last year's season Gucci. Instead of being ripped apart, Poppy has taken you in.
You two rushed for the Zetas and became top-ranking impressively during freshmen year. Being part of Poppy’s posse was the first time you ever felt genuinely happy. Poppy was the first person to ever listen to you. The first person to ever see you. To ever help you. You were so grateful. And to return that favor, you made sure that Poppy stays on top of rankings, the food chain.
The Queen B.
It’s not much, but at least you can protect her by being the Gretchen Wieners to her Regina George. At least you can keep her throne safe from anyone who wants to take it from her. You do the dirty work. You do the scheming to find out everybody’s ugly secrets. She is so unbearably beautiful and sometimes you see a future with her in your head, but your head—your head hurts, oh God your head is—
Stop.
Who are you?
Let the memories dissolve.
Your eyes are crusted.
Blink them.
Gasp in a ragged breath.
Then Chloe’s memories fade,
and you get up,
feeling a little better.
Not good, exactly.
Not happy.
Certainly not alive.
but . . . a little less dead.
This is the best you can do.
Then guilt and existential dread arrive.
You’re you again.
You’re no one.
Welcome back.
You feel the tiles under your fingers. You hear the gunshots. You stand up and look around, dizzy and reeling. You have never had a vision so deep, like an entire life spooling through your head. The sting of tears burns in your eyes, but your tear ducts no longer have fluid. The feeling rages unquenched like pepper spray. It’s the first time you’ve felt pain since you died. The pain felt the same way you just killed Chloe St. James.
You hear a scream nearby and you turn.
It’s her.
She’s here.
Poppy Min-Sinclair. Older now, 23. Her face was smooth and clear even without makeup, baby fat melted away revealing sharper lines and finer poise, a zombie pulled her pink jacket and she let them have it to free herself, revealing muscles small on her small frame. She is huddled in a corner, unarmed, sobbing and screaming as your zombie companion creeps towards her.
The hunting party’s leader always finds the women. Their memories are porn to him. Which is all he’ll ever get because the Dead can’t get hard or wet anymore. You know this. You’ve caught multiple Dead attempting to get it on but with the lack of fluids, it’s pointless.
You still feel disorientated, unsure of where or who you are, but… you shove him aside and snarl: “No. Mine.”
He grits his teeth like he’s about to turn on you, but a gunshot tore into his shoulder and he shuffles across the room to help two other zombies bring down a heavily armed kid. You approach the girl. She cowers before you, her tender flesh offering you all the things you’re accustomed to taking, and your instincts start to reassert themselves.
The urge to rip and tear surges into your arms and jaw. But then she screams again, and something inside you moves, a feeble butterfly struggling against a web. In this brief moment of hesitation, still warm with the nectar of Chloe’s memories, you make a choice. You let out a gentle groan and inch towards the girl, trying to force kindness into your dull expression.
You aren't a no-one. You are a seven-year-old girl, you are a 12-year-old girl, you are— She throws a knife at your head. The blade sticks straight into the center of your forehead and quivers there. But it has penetrated less than an inch, only grazing your frontal lobe. You pull it out and drop it. You hold out your hands, making soft noises through your lips, but you’re helpless.
How do you appear unthreatening when her best friend’s blood is running down your chin?
You’re just a few feet away from her now. She is fumbling through her pants for another weapon. Behind you, the Dead are finishing their butchery. Soon they will turn their attention to this dim corner of the room. You take a deep breath.
“Pop...py,” you say. It rolls off your tongue like honey. You feel good just saying it.
Her eyes go wide. She freezes.
“Poppy,” you said again. You put out your hands and point at the zombies behind you.
She stares at you, making no sign that she understands. But when you reach out to touch her, she doesn’t move. And she doesn’t stab you. You reach your free hand into the headwound of a fallen zombie and collect a palmful of black, lifeless blood. Slowly, with gentle movements, you smear it on her face, down her neck, and onto her clothes. She doesn’t even flinch. She is probably catatonic. You take her hand and pull her to her feet.
At that moment, the others finish devouring their prey and turn to inspect the room. Their eyes fall on you. They fall on Poppy. You walk towards them, gripping her hand, not quite dragging her. She staggers behind you, staring straight ahead. The leader sniffs the air cautiously. But you know he’s smelling exactly what you’re smelling.
Nothing.
Just the smell of Dead blood. It’s spattered all over the walls, soaked into our clothes, and smeared carefully on a Living girl, concealing the glow of her life under its dark, overpowering musk.
Without a word, you and Poppy leave the pharmacy and head out somewhere. You’re not going back to your community in the mall. You’re going somewhere where you can hide Poppy. Where she can heal her wounds, eat, and hide to gather her energy before returning her to camp. To the people, she left when she joined this suicide mission to retrieve medicine.
You walk in a daze, full of strange and kaleidoscopic thoughts. Poppy holds limply to your hand, staring at the side of your face with wide eyes, trembling lips.