The Ghosts of the Zombie Apocalypse (3 page)

  This is where Henrietta became physiological
[3]
. Clearly he must know that all this is going on...right? He can't be so ignorant that he is unable to pay attention to the danger he is in? Or is he so ignorant that danger just ignores him like an afterthought? Is that even possible?

  It was then that the man began to smell his burnt fabric. He looked down at his sopping wet sleeve and sighed. Henrietta then felt bad for being cynical
[4]
. Clearly the man has some deep pain about...whatever this was.

  Then man then finished his meal and laid down in the mess. Nothing actually happened the rest of the day. He just lay there staring at the ceiling breathing peacefully. Henrietta found herself enjoying it immensely. Her corpse never breathed much nor looked peaceful and every survivor she had seen since death had a look of terror on their faces. It was the first time in a while she really got to watch anything else. Even with this odd sensation of passive interest it was a nice change of pace.

  Night started setting in as the thin slivers of light seeping through the boarded up windows started to fade. Henrietta looked up from her absentminded gaze and went to poke her head out of the window
[5]
. Dusk was her favorite time of day, when vibrant colors erupted throughout the sky and then exploded into a million brilliant stars.

  Henrietta let herself float to the roof of the building for a better look. Since the city’s power went out she couldn't remember a time when the night sky looked so open and bright. It was funny how the total collapse of civilization made the world appear as such a beautiful place…Aside from all the death, decay, and dilapidation of everything everywhere of course. But the dead can't be choosers in this regard. That kind of thing was for the living.

  Behind the crescent moon the main bloom of stars cascaded down over the city like a soft blanket as the crickets disturbed the corpses throughout the city who replied with their moans.

The sound of something springing open caught Henrietta's attention. As she turned to see what it was the man emerged from a hatch and unknowingly sat beside her on the roof. He sighed as he silently stared out at the twilight of the sky. If a ghost could blush she would have. It wasn't about attraction, because honestly the man looked like a disfigured foot after surviving this long in the apocalypse. It was more about the company. She rather liked that he was quiet.

  All the other ghosts were good company to a fault. They were all friendly and very talkative but they were
extremely
bored and the story economy took its toll on everyone. Whenever she saw two ghosts together they would always be gossiping, retelling second hand stories or just filling up all the air between them with as many words as they could before their corpses would wander away from each other and cut the conversation short. She realized that she never saw any pairs of ghosts just sitting and gazing quietly with one another, like she was now. But she never saw Billy and Tom when they were alone. She imagined that they did stuff like this all the time. It kind of hit her somewhere that she didn't know she could be hit.

  The two of them sat for some time side by side just watching the stars twinkle. Eventually the man began a really long yawn before getting back up to go inside. Henrietta elected to stay on the roof. As she looked out over the city she heard the latch behind her shut shortly followed by the trumpeting of him crashing noisily down the stairs. She smiled inwardly at the outburst. Never had she realized that she could do that. Until now she only smiled with her face. It came as a mildly delightful surprise, like being wrapped with an unexpectedly soft blanket after a really long day.

  Ghosts don't sleep. At least not how people understand sleep. The same goes for corpses. At some time or other everything needs a moment to rest or recover.

  Henrietta drifted off to sleep on top of that roof. It was kind of like getting lost in a sea of static shocks but without pain or discomfort. Imagine getting massaged by genital lightning as you sorta felt coherently incoherent. Can you imagine all that? Good, now forget all of it cause it's not a thing like that at all. Sometimes things are just too much
for words to describe. It just one of those things that needs to be experienced for anyone to understand.

  It's not uncommon for ghosts to dream in this kind of state but due to the nature of death the dreams aren't exactly what you call dreams. It's more like a sensation of phantom body
[6]
. There is a thing where people dreaming often feel like they are ghosts where they can fly and walk through walls. Well when a ghost dreams it's like they have a physical body that respects gravity and the solidity of matter. It's just another one of those things that they don't know why it happens. If they had the creativity to figure out problems they would probably leave that one up to ghost Stephen Hawking to figure out.

   Currently Henrietta was dreaming that she was a middle aged fat man eating a block of cheese on a couch. Well that was a new experience, she dreamily thought. After finishing a second block of cheese and starting on a third she woke up to find herself on autopilot in the middle of the city following that weird man. It was well after day break and she was feeling plenty confused. 

  Autopilot was an important thing about ghosts. If they didn't have it every ghost would wake up and would frustratingly spend their entire day, every day, catching up to their corpse. Henrietta was use to her autopilot following her corpse but she never heard of it following someone else’s corpse. To that matter she never heard of anyone talk of a ghost following a survivor around. She had no idea what was going on. After getting some orientation of where she was she looked back at the man and saw him eating a block of cheese.

  How far am I going to take this? Henrietta thought as she tried to forget her dream. I should be trying to get back to my corpse. The only trouble with that is there aren't any other corpses around to hitch a lift from. This man appeared to be a superficial trouble magnate based on everything that happened yesterday. So where was all the trouble for him to miraculously avoid?

  A noise from above drew Henrietta’s attention to the sky. There were a few airplanes in the sky. She hadn’t seen an airplane flying in the sky since she had died. Something big was going down. No really, something big was coming down. And then it landed.

  The whole world exploded into fire. Henrietta didn't know what it would look like from inside the blast of an atomic bomb but if she could imagine what it would be like it might have been something like that. Waves of flame, ash, and wind threw debris around and through her. She sat comfortably in the air as the world blindingly burned down and towers of spiraling flame shot up into the sky. After ten minutes of that the world started to only resemble Hell.

  A noise from below Henrietta caught her attention.

  "Bull shit." Henrietta said as she saw the man craw out of a rubble covered man hole.

  He looked around the hell scape for a second then ducked back into the hole.

  "Now this I gotta see."

  Henrietta flew through the ground to find the man cowering in the dark sewer. She wondered how much long he had to live with all the radiation around. But he hadn't been around when the bomb went off. Does that really matter? Radiation is radiation after all. He may be alive now but that doesn’t mean he will be for much longer.

  Good god. Henrietta thought. Why am I really this interested in how this man will die? Oh no...What about all those corpses above ground?! Ooooo, Margaret is going to be so pissed if she losses her corpse that way. What about my corpse? Wait...Does that man really have several snakes on him? When did that happen?!

  A number of snakes were in fact entwined loosely around his limbs but they didn't seem to be trying to constrict him in any way. They seemed to treat him as some kind of moving tree or something before they slithered off him rattling their tails.

  "Ok what does it take to kill this man!? And where did rattle snakes come from in a sewer? What the hell is going on here!?"

  Suddenly the man stopped for two reasons. First he was blind and feeling his way through the sewer when he tripped and fell into something squishy. Second, a low moaning started to fill the air. Then another moan joined the first, then another. A chorus of moans began echoing throughout the sewer.

  The man lay frozen in a pile of filth as the hoard closed in on his location. So this was it...this was how he was going to die. It had to be it. Nobody was
that
unluckily lucky. For some reason that made Henrietta sad.

  This man had come out like a fantasy of slapstick in a dull repetitive world, tore Henrietta away from her corpse and had been the best quiet company she has ever enjoyed. When those corpses turn him to ghost she was totally going to give him the best welcome she had ever given anyone. But that didn’t feel right somehow. She rather liked him being alive.

  Henrietta felt helpless and lost and not entirely understanding why as the hoard approached...and walked right past him. Her jaw dropped. He was completely invisible to them. This blew her mind because she had seen corpses chase after the sounds of bugs and rats
[7]
. The hoard quickly wandered on as the moans died down in the distance. As the moaning faded away she heard another soft sound. The man was crying. That and it seemed she had a silent audience.

  A crowd of ghosts were watching her watch him.

  "Henrietta?" Tom said. "What are you doing here?"

  "I...I don't know..." Henrietta said

  "Where is your corpse?" Lucy asked

  "I...it got lost. I lost it somewhere...yesterday. What about yours? Where’s Billy?"

  "We all got disoriented in the blast." Tom said shaken "Some of us...lost our corpses to the fire."

  "...So sorry to hear that Tom. So whose corpses were those?"

  "We don't know. We were trying to catch them up when we found you and...What is that?" Tom said

  Henrietta looked to where Tom was indicating and saw the man curled up into a ball whimpering.

  "Oh…He's some guy that can't seem to die."

  "He looks pretty dead to me." Lucy said

  "What are you talking about? He is clearly a surviv-" Henrietta said cutting herself short as she looked at him.

  "No,” Henrietta said in disbelief “he's not dead. I watched him eat cheese and put a fire out. There is no way that he’s dead."

  "Hey I just call them like I see them. He's just another ghostless corpse. It’s not like we all haven’t seen any of them before. His ghost must have got lost somewhere."

  "No, I'd have noticed that."

  "Whatever. Nothing really matters anymore. Anyways we are going to catch up to ourselves or something. Coming?" Tom said a little uncertain about what to say to her.

  "No, I kinda wanna see how this turns out." Henrietta said. "Keep up with yourselves."

  "Suit yourself. Come on fellas!"

  The group of ghosts quickly left Henrietta to follow after the zombie hoard. She quietly sat next to the man and looked at him closely. He didn't look dead to her, just...insignificant, maybe a bit pathetic but defiantly not dead.

  The man eventually stood up, wiped away his tears, and made his way in the opposite direction of the hoard. Henrietta followed close behind him. That was starting to really grate on her nerves. She had, and still has, a very real chance to rejoin the others and maybe find her corpse but she chose not to. She was beginning to wonder if curiosity alone was the reason she kept following him. But deep down she knew it was because Lucy say he was already dead and she wanted to know why.

  They continued along the sewer as manhole covers from above burning with bright blue flames lit up the way. Eventually they reached a dark dead end. Frustrated the man sat down heavily and exhausted. The sewers were eerily quiet and only filled with the sound of his breathing and the occasional drip. A cracking noise from above began to echo out around them. Almost as if on cue the ceiling caved in as a bus fell through it narrowly missing the man by slamming into the wall just above his head.

  Henrietta was beginning to suspect that the world was not in fact ignoring this man but was more actively trying to kill him. That concept didn’t really make sense but surely the things that happened around him were more than just coincidence. Sure all those things that had happened were understandable things to happen due to the current circumstances but just how could this man still be moving after all that, dead or not. Thinking about that kinda made her head hurt.

  The man carefully climbed out from under the bus and made his way above ground. Apparently this part of the city wasn't on fire for some reason but it was still a smoldering wreck of rubble and debris. The man looked around as he stood out in the fresh air and took a deep breath. Just beyond a nearby knocked down building the glow of fire illuminated the deafeningly dark cloudy sky as billowing smoke and embers climbed up high to block out the sun.

  Ash crumpled gently under the man’s footsteps like snow as it fell gently from the sky. It was beautiful. Henrietta closed her eyes and pretended that it was winter with a bright orange sunset on the horizon as she walked gleefully through some ancient ruins of a long forgotten civilization. When she opened them again the man was standing still at the edge of the city.