Content Disclosure: Horror Elements
My car protested this morning in the dark of January at my apartment. I couldn’t blame it. With bone-chilling, midthirties cold, and rain coming down in buckets, it pelted automobile exteriors and skin with icy pins.
At five-thirty in the morning, wipers batting at the windshield to keep the sleet at bay, I drove to work. I slowly moved through the city and finally pulled into the parking lot at home base, where people emerged in front of my low beams, huddled beneath pine trees with cardboard boxes over their heads.
I never gave them much thought until Congress passed the Zombie Rights Act, and these humans went from being undead to a protected group and came out of hiding.
Not everyone becomes a zombie, just those with the right mix of recombinant chemicals in their system. Contrary to popular belief, zombies don’t eat brains and aren’t cannibals. Yes, they are undead and animated; some are cognizant and can speak. They rot away slowly as their bodies eat themselves, disappearing when the mottled flesh falls from their bones and their brains fully decompose. When they cannot move, they are taken into custody by a hospice group until they fully expire and can be laid to rest. Until then, they are untouchable, like any other resident of the US. I don’t know if they know they are zombies, but I believe the undead realize they are different because of the glares and stares of the living, and their odor makes people gag.
They don’t bother anyone. They just are. When the weather is pleasant, they spend their days wandering. When the weather is inclement, they find places to hole up until the rain stops.
Some zombies have absolutely nothing and lumber around with arms held stiffly at their side, dragging an uncooperative leg behind them, oblivious to the world. They step out in traffic; I’ve dodged them many times as I picked my way through the burbs into the city. I’m a ranger at a park at the confluence of three rivers. Other undead push shopping carts filled with sleeping bags or blankets and little trinkets gathered from the roadside and garbage cans, something to trade. Many hoard things because they remember having something. They teeter on the edge between awareness and disregard. They speak
