A Zombie Love Story
Deborah Walker
WHEN I BRUSHED my hair this morning, a few strands fell out and stuck to the hairbrush. They were adhered to a piece of skin and flesh around the size of an antique pound coin. I picked this coin of flesh off the hairbrush and held it to the light. I stared at it—as if I could see the fragmentation of my DNA in that small lump of tissue.
I threw it into the moleculator bin at the side of the sink. Then I carefully brushed my hair to hide the already scabbing wound.
I stared into the bathroom mirror. That was that, then.
I would pod into the space-station today to visit a doctor. Then I would put my affairs in order: I would make two, long overdue visits, one to my brother Peter, and one to my darling Marla.
And after that . . .
“MS. PETROVITZ, I am sorry to inform you that you have entered the first stage of transformation.”
The first stage. The point of no return. Stellar radiation had caused irrevocable damage within my body and within my mind. My DNA was on the long, slow escalator of deterioration. In a few weeks my mind would be gone but my body would live on.
There had been no real doubt in my mind, but I needed to have a doctor confirm the diagnosis.
“Have you entered it onto my medical records?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” The doctor’s face was professional stone. I wondered how many times he had delivered this diagnosis.
“I can arrange a counselling session for you, and I can also recommend a very active self-help group.”
“No thanks, Doctor. That’s not my style.” I stood up and held out my hand. “I intended to get euthanized and my chip activated as quickly as possible.”
I had no intention of enduring the long, slow process of dissolution.
“Well, that’s your choice, Ms. Petrovitz, but I would caution you against making any hasty decisions.”
“Doctor, I knew what the score was when I came to this part of space. I made my decision a long time ago.”
“As you wish.”
A zombie was entering data into a processor at the front desk. They can be trained for simple tasks. It looked like a women, a small frame encased in a flexible silver metal-rub suit holding her body together. I gave her a wave as I left the doctor’s office. There’s no stigma here, as there is on Earth. We cherish our zombies. They’re part of our life.
Why wouldn’t we, when we know that we will become them?
I’VE WORKED AS a miner for the last ten years. I have my own asteroid and a snug living space carved out of the rock. Now that I had the official diagnosis, I hooked up to the net and willed my home and mining rights over to Cassidy Sung. That would give her a shock. Before I met Marla, me and Cass had an on-off relationship for years. You know the type of thing.
Still, I hoped that me passing on the asteroid to her would mean something to Cass. I didn’t vid her, nothing much to say. Actions speak louder than words, in my opinion. I hoped she’d get some enjoyment out of the money my asteroid would bring her.
I was in a thoughtful mood as I walked the space station High Street along to the Church of the Resurrected Flesh. As I looked around the street I could see normals and zombies all mixed up together. We’ve built a fine place out here in this corner of space, we’re tolerant here.
And I’ve seen things that the human eye was never built to see. I’ve seen the sun rise and set on a dozen worlds; I’ve marvelled at the slow dance of strange lights over the ruins of ancient worlds; I’ve met people, weird people who have blown my mind with their alien philosophies. I have no regrets.
“Sister.”
The voice of a priest called out from a balcony on the Church. He was dressed in the garments of one of the resurrected, although he was a normal. He wouldn’t be able to talk otherwise.
“It’s later than you think. Come into the Church and prepare yourself.”
That made me stop for a minute. He was looking at me like he could tell, but by my reckoning, I had a couple of weeks to go before my mind went. Perhaps the priests develop some sort of sense about these things.
“I’m coming in, anyway,” I shouted.
“Hallelujah, Sister.”
“I’m just here to see my brother,” I said.
I was sorry to disappoint him. I’ve never been one to be into religion, much. I imagine it’s a comfort to some. That flake of flesh this morning hadn’t changed my perspective.
The priest on the balcony looked at me properly for the first time, seeing not a potential soul to be saved, but a person. “Ah, yes. You’re Brother Peter’s sister aren’t you? Come in and be welcome. I saw him working in his cell half an hour ago.”
I walked into the church and past the rows of pews that were filled with the resurrected. Their hands moved over church beads, as they made their prayers to God. Rich folk buy their contracts and set them here, saying prayers for their souls.
A light blinked at the back of each of the zombies’ necks, the electronic pulse that bathed their damaged brains in hormones. That flash of light kept us safe, turned them into supplicants and stopped them from becoming what was their nature—flesh-eating, mindless creatures.
I walked to Peter’s cell and knocked on the open door. “Hey, Peter.”
My brother was dressed in a metal-rub suit, too, but he’d pushed down the face covering mask.
He was engrossed in his work, as usual. “Have you heard what the scientists are saying?”
He almost spat out the word “scientists.” As if science wasn’t the thing that bought us here and had gifted us with this spectacular life in the stars.
I peered over his shoulder trying to read the paper upside down. “What are they saying this time?” I asked.
“They say that they’re on the verge of a cure for transformation.” He jabbed his finger angrily at the article.
My heart beat wildly for a foolish moment.
A cure?
But reality quickly reasserted itself. If there was a cure—and that was doubtful—it was too late for me. I was already walking along the dark tunnel. I felt glad that someone was waiting at the end for me.
“There’ll be no cure, Peter. They’ve been on the verge of cure for the last fifty years.”
“There say that there’s a new way of blocking out the stellar radiation.” He stood up, walked to the window of his cell, and looked out on the rows of zombie supplicants in the nave. “As if we want a cure. Look at the supplicants out there. Everything that made them human is gone, they’re brain-dead. Here in the heavens His rays delete the old self, but they live on. They’re in a state of innocence. They are incapable of sin. Even though their bodies continue to degrade, the power of His love has bestowed a miraculous regeneration on the limbs.”
I didn’t say if it weren’t for that pulse in the back of their necks, bathing the supplicants in calming hormones those innocents would be tearing us limb from limb. I didn’t want to argue with him, not now. So I said, “It’s a miracle alright.”
He smiled at me. “Have you found the light, Pat?”
He was kidding. Peter knew that I didn’t share his faith, that I thought the Church was just a crutch for those who couldn’t accept the reality of living in space.
If you live here, radiation causes incremental damage to your DNA. Eventually you reach the transformation point, and your mind dies. What happens afterwards—the continuation of the body—didn’t seem like a miracle to me. It was just a trick of biology. The same stellar radiation that killed your mind activated an older simpler part of the brain that allowed you to keep on moving. These multiple layers of our brains were just a consequence of our stroll through the long slow path of evolution.
“What’s wrong, Pat?”
He was my brother—he knew me.
“I’ve got something to tell you, Peter.”
He stopped reading the article and looked at me.
“My transformation’s started.”
“Oh, Pat.” He reached out and took my hand. I could see that he was conflicted. As a priest, it was wonderful news, another soul was about to enter the resurrected afterlife, but as a brother the news was not so good.
“And have you changed your mind about the Church?”
“No, Peter, I’m sorry.”
It crossed my mind that I should lie to him, just to make him happy. It would mean an awful lot to him. But that wouldn’t have been right.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t want to linger.”
Some people hid their transformation, putting off the inevitable for as long as possible, but not me. I wanted to make my good-byes today. Tomorrow I would go to the bureau, and get the final dose of radiation.
“That’s what I would have expected of you.” We hugged. “You’ve had a good life, Pat.”
“Will you promise me something, Peter?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Promise me that you won’t make me into a supplicant when I’m dead.”
“Of course, not. I respect your wishes.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, that was the thing I feared most.
Because when I’m dead, I wanted to spend the rest of my existence with my girl.
I WENT TO see my love.
I hadn’t been to see her for a few weeks. You know how it is when somebody dies, at first you visit them every day, and then little by little the visits begin to diminish. You start to get on with your life again. But some things don’t diminish, I missed her every day, every minute. She was still my lovely girl.
She worked in the hydroponics factory. She’d always loved growing things. The living space in my asteroid had born testimony to her obsession. I smiled. I only hoped that she was more successful here than she had been in our home. I was forever throwing out her dead ferns and whatnot.
I waited for her shift to finish, watching the silver suited zombies completing their simple tasks. Their unhurried, deliberate movements were replicated throughout the factory. They reminded me of a shoal of silver fish swimming through the ocean of their afterlife. They were . . . cohesive, I felt an inkling of what my brother had been trying to teach me all these years.
At the end of the shift they bought Marla to me and guided her to a chair.
“Marla, my love.”
I took her hand and felt her skin through the silver of the suit. I stared into her eyes, looking for recognition but there was nothing there.
It’s unknown how much the zombies remember. It’s a matter of research or a matter of faith, depending on your point of view. The Church argues that zombies have entered a state of purity, that their minds are lodged in heaven, while their bodies fall back into the clay.
Others, those who don’t understand, are less generous. They say that the zombies are automatons, or even monsters like the zombies of old, inhabited by malevolence.
They would not say that if they could look into the eyes of my love. I believe that she can hear me.
“It has been a long time, since you left me, Marla. I’ve been lonely without you. But I have good news. I will be joining you tomorrow.”
I scan her eyes.
“You’ve gone ahead, but I’m expecting you to show me the ropes, just like you always did. You always looked out for me.”
I’m crying now, willing for some reaction in her eyes.
But there is none.
It is too much for me. I do not want to linger. I leave her sitting in the chair. Looking forward to the morrow when I will enter the bureau.
I will complete the process that started when I first came here. They will bathe my head in radiation, my mind will slip away, my relentless brain will stop. The chip on the back of my neck will activate and I will step into the underworld.
Where I will be with my love, Marla, as I was in life, so I will be in death.
~
Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon hightailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two teenage children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog: http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.co.uk/. Her stories have appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Nature’s Futures, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and The Year’s Best SF 18 and have been translated into over a dozen languages.