Zombies Don't Cry Read online

  If it really were the case that the freezing of apparent age during rebirth is a deliberate contrivance—in case you’re in any doubt, it isn’t—the ban on resurrecting children would be a further side-effect of a choice, rather than a corollary of an inconvenient necessity. Experiments showed way back in the 2020s that children even babies, could be resurrected using SSCs, just as easily as adults—but that they would then remain existentially becalmed indefinitely. Some Burkers, of course—with the plaintive support of numerous bereaved parents—wanted such resurrections to be licensed anyway, on the grounds that future science was sure to throw up technics that would allow the Peter Pans in question to resume growing up at a later date, but Parliament had refused to do that. After all, the bereaved parent vote wasn’t very large, and the average age of MPs was way up in the fifties; they might have been in a hurry to get the legislation through, but they knew where their priorities lay.

  Maybe prohibiting the resurrection of children was the right thing to do and maybe it wasn’t—it’s one of those issues that generates a lot of philosophical debate, even in pubs, let alone polite dinner parties—but the real mystery, as I said just now, is why the decision ever had to be made. Why don’t SSCs rejuvenate as well as reanimate?

  If they did, of course, they’d be as much use to the living as they are to the dead—everybody would want them, and Burkers wouldn’t be Burkers but Basils, called after Basil Hallward, the artist who gifts Dorian Gray with potentially-eternal youth and beauty in Oscar Wilde’s classic moral tale.

  On the other hand, one has to consider the corollaries of rejuvenation seriously. Presumably, a brain that was rejuvenated rather than merely restored, would lost much of its accumulated knowledge and wisdom; the afterliving really would be very different people, freshly reborn—and so would the living who had to go back in time rather than simply being arrested in their progress. While not exactly a can of worms, possibilities like that wouldn’t be entirely Utopian. If they offered humankind a bed of roses, it wouldn’t be without its thorns.

  But still the question remains: given that there is no vast Conspiracy of Mighty Burkers, isn’t it weird that SSCs do what they do, in the way that they do it? If you ask me—not that anyone ever does, given that I only have a lousy English Lit degree and practically everybody else in the afterlife community thinks they know better than me because they’re so old and they think I’m just a pretty face—it must be to do with gene-switching. The SSCs themselves are, of course, switch-free by definition, but the residual life they’re working on, when they begin to resuscitate and mimic the cells of the individual they’re resurrecting, they’re operating on and taking their models from cells and tissues that have already reached a particular stage in the switching process: cells that already have their internal clocks set, in a way that can’t be wound back.

  That, I think, is why all the reborn start from where they left off in life, in terms of their apparent antiquity. It doesn’t matter as much as you might imagine, though, because Stan Blake is absolutely right. Even Methuselahs can get fit—and they have every incentive to do so, once they’re convinced that age is no longer taking a further toll…or taking it much more slowly than before.

  One corollary of that, of course, is that even Methuselahs could make an army, if they wanted to.

  Mercifully, they don’t. I give you my word of honor on that. We are not a warlike kind.

  * * * * * * *

  By the time I’d been turning up to the Center for a week, the “physiotherapy” was getting to be the most enjoyable part of the day, so far as I was concerned. It only took me five days to become the only person in the squad who could actually last the full two hours along with Stan, and I flattered myself that I looked good doing it.

  Stan was over the moon, if only because it gave him an excuse to carry on to the end himself. When I suggested to him that perhaps we might include some music that I liked along with Highway to Hell and Shout at the Devil, though, his immediate reaction was to frown.

  “All in good time, Son,” he said. “You’re the new boy, remember—can’t start throwing your weight around yet.”

  I decided that the status quo was tolerable, at least for a few weeks longer. It wasn’t as if Stan didn’t have standards. We did do The Time Warp, pretty much according to the instructions in the lyric, but were never called upon, even in jest, to resurrect The Monster Mash.

  The practical advice sessions and counseling were less enjoyable, especially when the powers-that-be sent living hirelings in to do the advising. Nobody at the Center minded Andy Hazelhurst poking around, because we knew that he was just a self-seeking glory-grubber out for what he could get, and therefore had no interest at all in feeding us committee-produced bullshit, but everyone resented the script-followers who did nothing else.

  I hated them even more than most, because their attitude and techniques reminded me strongly of my old job. Now that I was the one being soothed with weak encouragement and hollow pretence, I began to understand a little better how my own clients had felt about it. When I was mopping up after rockmobility on the last day of my first week, I confided to a couple of the others that I really wasn’t looking forward to that afternoon’s scheduled personal counselling session.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Stan told me. “Just let it flow over you, like so much background noise. I know it’s difficult, when they’re trying to engage us all the time by asking questions, but it’ll only take a fortnight or so for you to build up a repertoire of stock answers, so you won’t have to engage your brain at all.”

  “But you need to keep that smart mouth of yours under control,” Methuselah advised. “Don’t piss them off—especially the retraining salesmen. They know as well as you do that it’s all a farce, but they like to go through the motions without any fuss. Everybody benefits if it all goes smoothly. Sarcasm doesn’t help.”

  I knew from long experience on the other side of the questionnaire that the Wise Old Man was right, although I couldn’t help pointing out the irony that the only person at the Center who had a real job at present was Pearl, who was just as sarcastic as me.

  “Yes,” Andy Hazelhurst put in, having been eavesdropping on the conversation—it was difficult not to, given they layout of the tables and chairs—“but there’s actually a demand for zombie nurses. Your chances of getting on to that particular retraining program, with your English Lit degree, are a bit slim.”

  “If you could get proper funding for your research,” I retorted, “You could pay us a wage for serving as your guinea-pigs. That way we’d all have proper jobs. Even Methuselah.”

  “You have as much to gain from my investigations as I do, if not more,” he told us, mimicking the patience of a saint. “Every discovery I make is of immediate relevance to you, and if I’m fortunate enough to make a significant one, it will have an immediate impact on your lives. You’re volunteering in the best possible cause. You’re the true knights of the living dead.”

  Nobody had laughed at that joke for years.

  “What you ought to be doing,” Jim Peel told the doctor, “is working flat out to find a way to give us back our skin color and allow us to pass for living…that would really rehabilitate us.”

  “”No, Jim,” Marjorie put in. “That’s not the way to go about it. We shouldn’t be trying to go into hiding, to conceal what we are. We should be trying to change social attitudes, to fight, not just for ourselves, but for justice.”

  “Just like you,” Jim came back at her. “Except, of course, that you are in hiding, concealing who and where you are in your postings, whether you’re ranting about zombie rights or the radical green agenda. I’ll settle for the melanin.”

  Andy Hazelhurst hastened to pour oil on the briefly-troubled waters, or at least to deflect attention away from the immediate dispute with a little bluster. “Actually, he said, “that is one of the lines I’m working on, in the lab—but that kind of biochemical exploration only requires tissue-cult
ures, imagination and patience. I know that it must seem to you that all the measurements I take, and the little things I ask you do or swallow, are a bit pointless, but I have to be a trifle vague about what hypotheses I’m trying to test. We have to avoid the uncertainty principle, to the extent that’s compatible with the principle of informed consent. If you know what results I’m expecting or aiming for, it’s bound to affect the likelihood of their being produced. I give you as much explanation as I can, but you’ll just have to take it on trust that I really am trying to produce results that will work to your benefit.”

  “As every anthropologist knows,” Marjorie told him, mischievously “the only way to understand an alien culture is to go native. We’d be a lot more inclined to trust you if you were one of us. You’re a doctor—you must have a hundred convenient ways of killing yourself ready to hand.”

  The doctor took the suggestion in good part, laughing even though it hadn’t really been a joke. “Then I’d have to retrain,” he said. “It would take at least two years to get back to where I am now, even if everything went smoothly. I can’t afford to lose two years—it’s a highly competitive field, you know.” He always weathered such petty storms with ease, keeping his eye on the distant prize.

  “What I think you should be working on,” Methuselah put in, “is a way to give us dotards a bit more bodily strength and resilience. “It’s all very well for Stan to bang on and on about how even eighty-year olds can keep fit, but I’ve been doing his accursed rockmobility for four years now, and all that practice hasn’t given me the ability to do what young Nicky’s been able to do within a week—stay the distance, that is. If you want to earn my undying gratitude, Andy, give me back my twenty-seven-year-old body. I’ll try to live forever anyway, but I’d enjoy it a hell of a lot more….”

  “Just give me time,” the doctor said. “I’ll do my best. Only hang on long enough, and you’ll get your reward eventually.”

  “And rockmobility will help you hang on,” Stan put in, “even if you can’t stay the distance every morning.”

  “Would you want your twenty-seven-year-old brain back, though?” I asked him, having already given the matter some thought. “Would you want the memories and wisdom you acquired after that age to be wiped out?”

  “That wouldn’t be a necessary corollary,” Methuselah said—although I couldn’t see how he could be so sure about it. “My regenerated body obviously has a resilience that the old one lacked—adding in the appearance of youth would be a superficial thing, essentially cosmetic.”

  I had to leave the group broke up then, because my counsellor had arrived, but I survived the session without any undue stress on either side. She not only left convinced that I was perfectly sane, and adapting very well to my new condition, but that she had played some small part in that success herself—thus, no doubt, making her pathetic existence seem almost worthwhile, at least until she saw her next living client.

  I sought out Methuselah again to tell him that I had followed his advice. He was sitting on his own; Andy Hazelhurst had gone, Stan was in conversation with Jim Peel on the far side of the room, and Marjorie was back on the workstations, pounding out yet another article.

  “It was fine,” I reported. “You and Stan are right—no point in worrying, just settle into the groove, keep my smart mouth zipped, and get it over with. I’m not looking forward to the retraining consultant on Monday, though. Whatever she wants to fix me up with, I know I’m not going to like it.”

  “Same principle,” he said. “Go with the flow, and be polite. All you need is patience—you especially. You don’t need rejuvenating to get the full benefit of our afterlife.”

  “Andy’s right,” I told him. “You’ll get your full reward too, in time.”

  “Sure,” he answered, plainly unconvinced. “When I look your age again, I’ll give you a run for your money with young Pearl. You might have to get a move on there, mind—now you’re here to spur him on, Jim will be stepping up the pressure.”

  “I’ve already got a girl-friend,” I told him.

  “A living girl-friend?”

  “Yes. We were practically engaged before…the bomb.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Methuselah assured me. “Living boys still chase zombie girls, because their raging hormones aren’t fussy, and they’re prone to all sorts of eccentric fetishism, but living girls won’t have anything to do with zombie boys, even to piss off their parents.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of an over-generalization?” I objected. “Not to mention blatantly sexist.”

  “Trust me, Son,” he replied. “I may be old, but I know my birds and bees, and which is which, and I know the way the world works. Miss out on Pearl, and it might be quite some time before you get another chance. What’s worse, the harpies will start to figure you for easy meat. Marjorie’s all talk, but Alice…if she starts whispering in your ear about the advantages of making love to older women, make an excuse and leave.”

  I didn’t believe him, of course, but the fact remained that Helena still wouldn’t return my calls, now that I’d got a brand new pay-as-you-go phone, or reply to any emails I sent from home. I’d let her know my new details as soon as I’d got the account set up, ostensibly just for politeness’ sake, but I’d also sent her a couple of other messages since then, tell her how much I missed her and asking her to get in touch. No joy so far.

  He wasn’t wrong about Alice, either. She had already engaged me in one suggestive conversation on the subject of the afterliving putting our obsolete prejudices aside, and adapting to the fact that the clocks of our existence had been restarted. She was a couple of years older than Marjorie, but equally well-preserved and far more feminine. I wasn’t sure that I liked that, though. Alice didn’t seem likely every to be able to appreciate my sense of humor, no matter how much practice she put in.

  As I’d told Methuselah, though, and took care to inform Alice, I already had a girl-friend.

  Methuselah’s broad generalization did seem to have some truth in it, however; it wasn’t just my older peers who openly courted Pearl—with little or no response. She had picked up a living stalker, who was often to be seen hanging around the Center.

  “Did you know him when you were alive?” I asked her, one evening when she was hesitating at the window of the Center before heading back to the hospital accommodation-block where she lived.

  “No,” she said. “His mother’s an out-patient at the hospital. He drives her in from the west Berks wilderness for dialysis twice a week. It’s a sad case, actually—they’re both under a lot of stress. He’s quite harmless—embarrassing rather than dangerous.”

  “I thought stem cell treatments had virtually put an end to the need for dialysis,” I said.

  “Not entirely. Most defective kidneys can be repaired that way, but Timmy’s mother has the most awkward kind. Her kidneys are in the front line of a variety of lupus that’s gradually ruining all her organs. Stem cells can’t fight it because it’s an auto-immune disease, so the stem-cells come under attack as soon as they go to work.”

  “What about alternative treatments?”

  “The dialysis is the alternative, although it’s just a stopgap. Poor Timmy wanted us to transplant one of his kidneys, but we had to explain to him that, precisely because he’s a compatible match, the auto-immune disease would attack the transplanted kidney too. The worst of it is that she’s not a candidate for resurrection. Even SSCs can’t defeat this particular enemy. She’s relentlessly cheerful about it—she belongs to the County Set. You know the type: upper-middle class with aristocratic pretensions, takes the view that no miserable disease has any right to kill her. She puts on an act of being convinced that she only has to stay positive and she’ll pull through, but I doubt that she really believes it, and Timmy certainly knows that the fact that his father is a gentleman farmer with a second home in the Highlands doesn’t make a damn of difference to the fact that Mummy’s doomed. You can understand why he’s not
quite himself, given that he’s the one who has to look after her while Daddy’s busy fighting the Depression. Getting fixated on me is just a displacement of his true feelings, and it really isn’t any inconvenience to me that he drives his silly little car all the way to Reading even when his mother doesn’t have an appointment, so he can follow me around.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, dubiously. “People like that can sometimes seem harmless, and then suddenly explode….”

  “Not Timmy,” she insisted. “I’m not afraid of him. There’s no need.”

  “I’ll walk you home, Pearl,” Jim Peel was quick to volunteer, having overheard what she’d said and instantly taken the inference that she meant the opposite of what she’d said. “He won’t dare mess with me.”

  I assumed that he was right about that; resurrection had restored every lumpen inch of his massive frame, and six months of rockmobility—of which he rarely survived more than half an hour at a time—had not yet made much of a dent on his brick-shithouse build.

  “He wouldn’t dare mess with me, either,” Pearl retorted, sharply. “He’s just an embarrassment, okay? I’m more worried about him than me. If he gets tagged as a zombie-fancier, he’s more likely to get roughed up than I am.”

  “And nobody’s likely to be intimidated by him, in spite of his name,” I couldn’t resist putting in. Nobody smiled.