Zombies Don't Cry Read online

  “I was unconscious,” I reminded her.

  “You were dead,” she countered.

  “And now I’m not.”

  “No,” she admitted, “you’re not…but it’s not the same, Nicky.”

  She stopped, and again her silence spoke volumes. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook, though. I waited for what I was due.

  “I thought I owed it to you to come and tell you in person,” she said, finally, “because it would have been cowardly not to, but I can’t. I just can’t.”

  There was no point in asking her to specify what it was that she couldn’t. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but none in mine. There was no point, either, in repeating that I was still the same person that I was before, whether it was true or not. The point was that I didn’t appear to be.

  “I still love you,” I told her, “with all my heart.”

  “I know,” she said, weakly—although she couldn’t know, really.

  “I always will,” I told her.

  She wasn’t even going to pretend to know, or believe that, or even to take it seriously.

  “I can’t, Nicky,” she said, again. “I thought I could, for a day or two. I honestly tried. But I can’t. You died. And you came back—but coming back isn’t the same as not going. I can’t.”

  “Maybe if we got to know one another again…start afresh….” I said. Maybe that was when I first began to develop a taste for the bizarre. It sounded ridiculous, even to me.

  “No, Nicky,” she said. “It’s over. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I have to go now.”

  “You haven’t drunk your tea.”

  “I know.”

  It should have ended there, but it didn’t. There’s no point in reproducing the rest, though. It wouldn’t show me in a good light, and as it’s my story, I reserve the right not to do that, so long as I don’t actually falsify anything. Sometimes, the abbreviated truth is better than the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And even if it’s not…well, as I say, it’s my story, and I’ll tell it the way I want to.

  The way I want to tell it is that I was still in love with Helena, and convinced I always would be, but that it really wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t reciprocate any longer. After all, it wasn’t as if we were engaged to be married, or even almost-engaged. No promises had been made, no sworn undertakings given. We’d simply been in love, and now one of us wasn’t, any longer.

  And for once, in spite of everything I could do to resist the fact, it really was as simple as that.

  When Helena had finally gone home, Mum came in, and tried to put her arm around me. She couldn’t—perhaps because I was grown up now, no longer a child.

  “That’s the way it is,” I told her.

  For once, she had nothing to say.

  “It doesn’t need to be,” I told her. “If we could just…pull ourselves together. I’m only a couple of shades paler than I was before, for God’s sake! I don’t even have to wear the hat and sunglasses indoors. It’s next to nothing. I’m not Frankenstein’s fucking monster.”

  “Of course not,” she said, not bothering to complain about my intemperate language. “You’re the same person you were before. She doesn’t deserve you. You’ll find someone else. That nurse liked you, I think.”

  There was no need whatsoever to ask which nurse, and no earthly point in pointing out that Pearl had shown no evidence of any such liking.

  “I think she’s in love with Dr. Hazelhurst,” I said.

  “What makes you think that?” Mum asked, warily.

  “All nurses fall in love with doctors,” I said. “If soap operas teach us nothing else, they teach us that. And she calls him Andy. He’s not in love with her, of course. He’ll break her heart. Doctors always break nurses’ hearts. If soap operas teach us nothing else, they teach us that. The fact that she’s a zombie and he’s not is irrelevant, in this instance.”

  “Well if that’s the case,” Mum said, probably not in the least deceived as to what we were really talking about, “he doesn’t deserve her, and she’ll find someone else.”

  “A Pearl before swine,” I muttered, pointlessly. I didn’t smile. Nor did Mum.

  Kirsten arrived home then, but I couldn’t bear to talk to her. I never even saw Dad that evening. I needed to be alone with my burning, brooding, tragically unrequited love.

  It was still burning and brooding the next morning, but I no longer needed to be alone, and certainly not with Mum, even though she was still off work.

  “I’m going to the Center at the old Sally Ann,” I told her, when breakfast as out of the way. “Got to introduce myself, find out what’s what.”

  “I’ll drive you,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly—it’s only a few hundred yards. I’ve got to make a start on facing up to the world, facing up to reality. I need to show my face—let the neighbors get used to it. I need to walk.”

  “You only got out of hospital yesterday,” she protested. “You died, Nicky. I don’t care how well you feel—you died.”

  I knew that, but I could understand why she felt obliged to emphasize the point.

  “I know, Mum,” I said, quietly. “But I’m up and about again now. I have to make new beginning. I need to start making some new friends...because it wouldn’t be fait to put too much pressure on the old ones, would it?”

  “I’m your mother,” she said, although I hadn’t actually accused her of anything. “I still love you, as much as I ever did. I always will.”

  “I know, Mum,” I told her, “but I still need to go to the Center, and I’d really like to walk. I’m a Knight of the Living Dead now: I have to undergo my trials by ordeal, or I’ll never get to touch the Holy Grail, let alone drink lemonade out of it.”

  She didn’t smile—but she didn’t shed a tear either.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I will,” I promised—and I was.

  Actually, there wasn’t any real need to be careful. I didn’t see a single rottweiler taking his ED member out for a walk, and most of the non-white faces I passed in the street, including the “white” ones, simply looked the other way, with a kind of feigned negligence that seemed oddly polite, in its fashion. There were exceptions, though—mostly people I met before I got to the end of the street, who had known me when I lived at home, before I went away to university. They knew who I was, in spite of my changed appearance, and some of them made a point of saying hello, or at least nodding. I was grateful for that.

  Once I’d turned the corner, though, it was different. I’d been sent to Coventry. I almost regretted the fact that no one even made a sign of the cross with his index-fingers, let alone hurled holy water at me and shouted in Latin, or do whatever Muslims do when they’re attempting to repel evil djinn.

  It wasn’t all bad, though. I started to make new friends even before I reached the double-doors of the old Salvation Army Hall, catching up and falling into step with two members of the afterliving—one a middle-aged female and one an old man—who were headed in the same direction, coming from the direction of the old Bail Hostel in South Street. It was obvious, even from behind, what they were, because of the broad-brimmed hats.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Nick Rosewell.”

  They paused, and peered at me through their dark glasses.

  “But your friends call you Nicky,” the woman said. “Pearl told us to expect you. I’m Marjorie, and this is Martin—but his friends call him Methuselah.”

  I could see why. Marjorie looked as if she’d died in her late forties, but Martin-alias-Methuselah must have been at least seventy when he’d passed over. Poor old sod, I thought. Condemned to look seventy-five forever. It’s like that old saw about your features getting stuck if the wind happens to change while you’re pulling a face.

  “Everybody calls me Methuselah,” the old man added. “I don’t mind in the least—it gives me something to aim for.”

  “Aim for?” I queried, although I really shoul
dn’t have been caught on the hop.

  “And Methuselah lived an hundred and eighty and seven years,” he quoted, sententiously, “and begat Lamech…except that I’m not so sure about begetting Lamech. I’ll settle for the years.”

  “Right,” I said. “I can see that I’m going to feel at home at the Center. Are you members of what Dr. Hazelhurst referred to as the lunatic fringe?”

  “Not me,” said Methuselah. “Marjorie is—although it’s slightly cheeky of you to ask.”

  “I can see that you’re going to be a veritable treasure,” Marjorie assured me. “We don’t have many young people, and it’s no bad thing to be cheekier than Jim. He’s a nice chap, but I must admit that I find his constant pessimism annoying. We’ll all love you.” She didn’t specify exactly who she meant by all.

  “That’s nice,” I said, “but I’ve already got a girl-friend.” I just slipped out. It wasn’t exactly a lie. After all, I was still in love.

  “Well then, I’ll have my work cut out, won’t I?” Marjorie said. “I’ve never minded a bit of competition, though. And I always get my man.” She smiled—and the smile, although it was a trifle hollow, made her look rather attractive. She might have been slightly intimidating in life, but the paleness of afterlife had softened her strong features a little, and she had a good figure, robust but shapely.

  “She’s teasing,” Methuselah supplied, helpfully. “She means the bit about not being intimidated by competition, though—that’s why Andy makes patronizing remarks about the lunatic fringe. She was famous you know, in life, and she’s gradually fighting her way back to the top.”

  Marjorie seemed a trifle ambivalent about that revelation, but she took it in good part. “You won’t have heard of me,” she said. “Marjorie Claridge. I was….”

  “A mouthpiece for Greenpeace,” I put, swiftly. “My sister’s a keen member. She’ll be tickled pink to know that I’ve met you—I don’t think she has any idea that you’re in Reading.”

  “I post anonymously these days,” Marjorie said, “and keep my address secret. Not that I like lying low…it’s just that my old friends, grateful as they are for my continued support…well, it’s complicated.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “I understand,” I said, thinking, in my naivety, that I did.

  We had reached the steps of the Hall already. The words SALVATION ARMY were still engraved in the sandstone lintel above the sturdy double door. There wasn’t even a piece of paper pinned to the batten to inform passers-by or new members that it was now an Afterlife Center.

  “Have you met Stan yet?” Methuselah asked, as climbed the four steps leading up to the doors.

  “No,” I said. “Pearl mentioned him, though. He runs the place, right?”

  “He thinks he does” Marjorie murmured, as we opened one of the battens of the double door and slipped through. “And we humor him, poor lamb.”

  She was joking, of course. Stan came to meet me as soon as he realized that he had a newcomer to add to his flock. A lamb he was not, and not just because he must have been at least sixty when he died. He was an alpha ram from top to toe. He wasn’t that much taller than me—no more than five-eleven, I estimated—but he was very solidly build and looked very tough indeed, in spite of his albinism. He had a shaven head and a nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. He was wearing track-suit bottoms and a black T-shirt, which exposed numerous tattoos on both upper arms. Dragons two, roses three, I though, quoting it to myself like a football score.

  Aloud, all I said was: “Pleased to meet you—I’m Nick Rosewell.”

  “And your friends call you Nicky,” he said, putting the seal on my fate. “Pearl told us to expect you. I’m Stanley Blake—Stan to my friends. We’ll be starting rockmobility in a quarter of an hour or so, but there’s time for Methuselah to show you round first, if he doesn’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” Methuselah said. “I don’t have to do retraining programs, like the younger folk, so I have more free time,” he added, by way of explanation. “Not that I still get my pension, of course—I’m on minimal dole, just like everyone else.”

  “There’s not much to see, I’m afraid,” Stan resumed, “except for the workstations…you can use them for your retraining courses, if you want…although I gather that you’ve got a home to go to.”

  “I’m staying with my parents for now,” I confirmed, although I really wanted to ask him what “rockmobility” might be. “I’ve got a workstation there—it used to be in my flat but…well, you understand.”

  “Sure,” said Stan. “Don’t worry—you’ll be at home here too. You look pretty fit, for a newreborn—sportsman?”

  “Just Sunday Morning football in Palmer Park—soccer, that is. I hear you’ve got a rugby player.”

  “Jim Peel,” Stan confirmed, looking round but obviously not spotting the prop forward in question. “Did some weights myself, a long time ago, a little boxing—no good with my feet though…not for kicking, anyway.”

  “Much better at tripping the light fantastic, no doubt?” I quipped.

  He grinned wryly. “You’ve been talking to Pearl,” he said, seemingly jumping to an erroneous conclusion. “Don’t take her sarcasm too seriously. She can be sharp, but her heart’s in absolutely the right place.”

  “Never doubted it,” I assured him, with perfect candor.

  Stan excused himself then, handing me back to Methuselah. Marjorie Claridge had already slipped away, apparently having spotted a vacant workstation.

  As Stan had said, there wasn’t a lot to see. The Hall itself was moderately large—about thirty meters by twenty-five, but it was a trifle bare, apart from the mezzanine where the workstations had been installed. There was a small kitchenette, with a serving-hatch, but it didn’t have much in it except for a sink, a couple of cupboards, a coffee-maker and a microwave oven. There was also a store-room, off the corridor that led to the back door, but we didn’t go in to inspect it.

  “Stan sleeps in there, although he isn’t supposed to, according to the Council regs,” Methuselah explained. “There’s a second bunk, in case of emergencies, but the Hostel’s only a couple of hundred yards away, so it doesn’t get used much. Most of the gang live there, although Jim stays with his parents, like you, and those who have jobs mostly have their own places…not Pearl though; she lives in the accommodation-block at the Berks—what they used to call a “nurses’ home” in my young days, although that’s not politically correct now that junior doctors use it too. And this is Stan’s blaster.”

  Stan’s “blaster”—an old fashioned audio unit with twin speakers nearly as tall as me, was the only substantial item of furniture on the floor of the hall, except for a handful of tatty armchairs and two trestle-tables, each with half a dozen folding chairs presently laid flat on top of them.

  “Rockmobility,” Methuselah said, as if that explained everything. Obviously, he thought Pearl had told me as much about the Center as she’d apparently told the people in the Center about me. Lowering his voice, he added: “We’ll spread the chairs out later, when Stan’s done his thing—make the place more comfortable. Have to humor him, though, as Marjorie says.”

  “He thinks he runs the place,” I observed, flippantly. “Poor lamb.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I’d lied to my mother in the heat of the moment; I was Frankenstein’s monster. I had been brought back from the dead. End of story.

  I hadn’t been stitched together from spare parts of other people’s bodies, but I’d been stitched together from the debris of my own. I had died. My heart had stopped; brain activity had faded to undetectability. Consciousness—the soul, in the only meaningful sense of the word—had fled its mortal envelope, leaving nothing but a husk. Then I had been reanimated: brought back, if not to life, at least to a condition resembling life, and to a condition seemingly identical to consciousness. Frankenstein’s monster to a T.

  According to the pope himself, I no longer had a soul—the one I
’d had was now “with God”. Mind you, it wasn’t that long ago since once of the jolly old soul’s predecessors had ruled that human clones couldn’t possibly have souls, thus condemning half of every pair of identical twins to soullessness. None of them had minded; why should I?

  In any case, the real point is that even Frankenstein’s monster had only become a monster because other people rejected him, refusing to consider him one of their own. Had he not been rejected, even by his creator—a poor excuse for a modern Prometheus he was—the Adam of the Resurrected might have been good and kind, mild and generous, loving and caring. Just like me.

  I was Frankenstein’s monster, but there was no need at all to be ashamed of the fact—and I wasn’t.

  Except, of course that it wasn’t as simple as that.

  There was, after all, a sense in which I hadn’t been dead—not entirely, at any rate. When the heart has ceased to beat and the brain to thrill with electricity, and consciousness has fled, life still remains in individual cells within individual tissues—and every one of those cells carries the entire genetic complement of the human being of which it is, or was, a part. In principle, every one of those cells might, by means of clever biotech wizardry, be reduced to pre-blastular innocence, to become not merely a totipotent stem cell but a substitute ovum, merely requiring a tiny electrical impulse to spark its redevelopment.

  Today’s Burkers don’t cut it as fine as that. They work on a more lavish scale, They take, not one, but a thousand still-living cells from a body whose person—soul, if you like—is dead, restore their innocence, enhance their potency, and then send them back into the not-quite-completely-dead body like a vast invading army. There they collaborate with other still-living cells, reanimating the only-just-dead and cannibalizing the irredeemably-dead, all in the interests of restoring general life and general consciousness to the whole body, restarting the heart-beat, reactivating the thrill of the neurons and, in consequence, resurrecting the person, and maybe renewing the soul.

  In a sense, therefore, the dead are not being brought back to life at all; it’s merely the life that still remained within them, helpless and fugitive, that has been rescued, redeemed and set free again. The processs isn’t a death followed by an afterlife at all, but a mere temporary diminution of life, followed by its reignition: medicine, not magic; heroic measures, not miracle-working.