<\/p>\n
We were having coffee on the porch when the first beat up truck arrived across the street. The screens in the sun room windows blur the view to the interior while allowing us to peek out uninhibited. We can be the nibby neighbors without the telltale lift of blinds or pulled curtain. <\/span><\/p>\n The truck was a POS, Piece O’ Shit. A broken rear spring caused the it to list heavily to the left, like a ship ready to roll over into a sea of asphalt. A misaligned junkyard bed butted against the cab with dented red and blue fenders flanking either side. A flotsam of precariously balanced furniture reached up from the bed like clawing fingers.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He got out on the driver’s side and I knew immediately what he was. He wore a grubby Pirates ball cap pulled over his eyes and even though he tried to cover it, he walked with the stoop shouldered, shuffling gate of the undead. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cJust what we need,\u201d I said to the wife–\u201cFriggin’ zombies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThey look kind of normal,\u201d Evie said, hesitantly. \u201cSort of.\u201d Her voice trailed off. She knew I was right. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLook at the way his clothes are hanging on him. All limp. There’s no muscle underneath. It’s all dead flesh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe does look a little pale\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not pale. That’s five pounds of pancake make<\/span>–<\/span>up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A woman exited the passenger side and started limp<\/span>ing <\/span>up the steps of the dilapidated house. Gray, stringy hair hung from under her John Deere cap.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cShe’s wearing a ball cap too,\u201d I said. \u201cSure sign.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThey walk almost normal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cPhysical therapy. Health insurance covers it, under the Affordable Care Act. They have their own clinics. You’ve seen the signs<\/span>:<\/span> ’24-Hour Physical Therapy’. They go at night and the windows are blackened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A car pulled in behind the truck a few minutes later with an older man and woman. Zombies too.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOh man,\u201d I said. \u201cA whole damn family of zombies, even grandma and grandpa.\u201d The old man sported a bush hat while the older woman wore a floppy sun hat. Zombies wore hats to hide their faces and protect against UV rays which increased the deterioration of their flesh. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The house was an abandoned, rotting eyesore directly across from ours. <\/span> Too many old houses neglected and dying in our town. Nobody to take care of them. Every neighborhood had one. An old Grandma lived in her home alone but wasn’t able to do maintenance as she tottered on in her declining years so it fell into a pit of shabby. The houses breathed their last and shut the curtains along with her. Too busy adult children lived a thousand miles away. The family rents its cheap, as is, <\/span>squeezing pennies from dirt, not caring who lives there. This one had paint peeling off the siding, and a hole in the roof where shingles had blown away in an early spring storm leaving exposed tar paper and sheeting. Water had to be pissing down all over the inside through the hole. The yard was a jungle of waist<\/span> high grass and weeds. <\/span>Some windless days, the grass moved, weaving a sinuous trail of something crawling below, maybe rats. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A succession of unsavory renters did more damage. We were certain the first occupant manufactured and sold drugs. Cars came and went at all hours. Flashing lights on the ceiling at 2:30 am and the police finally carted him away. It only sat empty for a month before the puppy mill moved in. Cage after cage, stacked ceiling high. Small dogs yapping day and night. Truck showing up daily with bags of dog food. Police did eventually force it closed after weekly calls to city inspectors and numerous neighborhood petitions about the stench. This last year it lay tired and empty. We hoped it would stay that way or collapse on its own of weariness some night. I petitioned the city to condemn it and tear it down but the city fathers said it ain’t happening until it’s a hazard. \u201cDefine hazard,\u201d I said. And now these queer, shuffling diseased <\/span>things <\/span><\/i>were moving in.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’d been tempted, more than once, to sneak over in the dark of night and set the place ablaze. None of the neighbors would testify against me, in fact, they’d probably get up collection to offer me a paid Bahamian vacation.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two days after the first pickup arrived, they returned with another load of well worn furniture. This time a tattered couch and overstuffed chair. By weeks end, three loads of furniture stumbled and fell up the steps. They had help from other zombies. A twenty-five year old paint splotched Fairlane spewed out six of their friends along with a fog of smoking oil. The zombies were officially in residence across the street.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first month the comings-and-goings were non-stop. We’d lost count of how many stayed in the house but I think there were seven or eight altogether. Wife guessed nine or ten. She gave them names to keep track. Two more weeks of watching and we concluded they were occupying the house in rotating shifts. ‘Hot racking’, we called it in the navy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The older woman from the first day, with the straw hat, she deemed ‘the matriarch’. The man who accompanied her was Uncle Buck. We thought they were the parents or in-laws of the younger couple. The older couple dropped off a young boy, possibly their grandson. A fourteen year old who may have been chubby once before the zombie virus thinned him down. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLet’s call him Paulie,\u201d she said. It was now a daily ritual to sit on the porch and watch the comings and goings across the street. It was better than any reality TV show.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhy Paulie?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSeems like a good name. First I thought of ‘Blubber’ or \u201cPudge\u201d both those are insulting. He’s probably a good kid. Was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Society was still working on the syntax of referring to reborn. Technically–they were still dead. The heart didn’t pump, kidneys and liver were dormant too but somehow, they had brain function. I read a study somewhere, in a popular science magazine that said, IQ was only minimally decreased and it depended a lot on the circumstances of where and how long they lay dead before re-animation occurred. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The legal issues. Oh boy! Early on, before the world understood what was happening, certificates of death were issued. Re-animation generated a maelstrom of bureaucratic paperwork and relegated the undead to the status of second<\/span>–<\/span>class<\/span> citizens. Or maybe third. Dogs had more rights than the undead. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A startup software group created a translation app. It was able to <\/span>render<\/span> the groans, grunts and moans issuing from the decayed vocal chords into understandable language<\/span>. <\/b>The app sold millions of copies at 99 cents in the first weeks of release because now families could communicate with their undead love ones. Evie installed one of the translator apps on her phone. She had the window sash raised enough for the phone to sit inside the screen with the mic facing out and set it to record.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe can play it back after they’re inside.\u201d Her eyes lit up. \u201cAren’t you the least bit curious about what they’re talking about?\u201d Yeah, I was, like rubber-necking at a train wreck.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Uncle Buck drove Paulie to school every morning. <\/span>Of course they didn’t attend regular schools.<\/span> No sense in helping the virus spread<\/span>. Anyway, <\/span>who wants zombies hanging around their daughters<\/span>?<\/span> Paulie wore his pants pulled up to his chest, sized for a taller boy. Clothes come from charity stores. No market for fashionable zombie clothing line.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We thought Paulie belonged to the younger couple, who were probably husband and wife before the sickness.<\/span> Concurrent stages of decay within the family suggests one of them brought the virus home and within a week all of them were infected. Kids went to camps in summer. Paulie probably carried the infection home from camp. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The initial outbreak started in the heat of mid July. Symptoms manifested as a bad summer cold with profuse sneezing and coughing. The spewed clouds of contamination hung in the air for hours waiting for a host. That’s how it spread so rapidly and it <\/span>had<\/span> resilience so it took a heavy duty thorough cleaning to disinfect a home or office. The bug created another economic boom for some companies. Sales of bleach and disinfectant sprays skyrocketed. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We called the wife, ‘scrub lady’ because she wore stained blue hospital scrubs. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cShe probably works in one of those zombie personal care homes. There\u2019s one on the far end of Fairchance Avenue,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The husband<\/span> was tall and thin and looked to be the type who wore Birkenstocks before becoming a zombie.<\/span> He took his hat off once after struggling to manhandle a couch up onto the porch. My eyes can never un-see the sight of that bare skull. It is burned into my retina like an image on an old computer monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Zombie disease does terrible things to the body once infected. It’s a wasting disease and ultimately the organs shut down and the victim dies. They rot for about a week and then come back to life. This particular mutation of the virus doesn’t make the victims crave human flesh. A few of the newly reanimated embraced veganism. They did have to eat and for a while scientists had trouble with how the food processed in their bodies because most of the organs inside their bodies didn’t function, no one was sure about the need for food. Nothing supernatural about it. The infected staph bacteria metabolized the food for energy. It wasn’t an efficient process, in fact, it was a losing battle. They could only consume enough to survive. Obesity would never be an issue.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Urban populations were decimated in the first wave. People died in droves. Emergency agencies were overwhelmed with corpses. A week to ten days later, the undead began to resurrect, but the body decay continued until the CDC came up with an inoculation to stabilize though not completely arrest the deterioration process. It also helped ameliorate the stench of decay. Before the inoculations, flesh was falling off the poor things. The deodorant and perfume industry boomed with a new growth selling zombie perfume products. The shelves were overflowing with a profusion of zombie<\/span>,<\/span> \u201c<\/span>smell-well<\/span>\u201d <\/span>products.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Economies <\/span>worldwide<\/span> virtually halted. People sealed doors and windows and stayed inside to avoid contact. Gradually the inoculation effort took hold. The spread plateaued and zombies tried to return to their ordinary lives.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It took a while for attitudes to change after the explosion of zombieism but stores began hiring them. A few even got their old jobs back. It was a good thing because they strained the existing social welfare systems beyond breaking. Most of the jobs were back room positions, as long as they remained hidden, people were okay with it<\/span>. <\/span>Consequently<\/span> a lot of them worked fast food in the kitchens <\/span>after<\/span><\/i> new food safety regulations went into effect.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Zombies have a negative effect on property values when they move or return to a neighborhood because they don’t keep up their yards <\/span>and there’s trash everywhere. I understand they don’t have the energy for it because of the disease but still, they could make an effort<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The guy across the street appeared to be the exception. He even had a mower. It was a Frankenstein thing of sewn together deck, motor, lopsided wheels and handle. It leaned drunkenly to one side. I had to give him credit, Saturday morning, he was out there trying to start it. When it finally did turn over, it belched and burped smoke like a low flying crop duster, <\/span>draping<\/span> the yard in an oily fog. He wobbled back and forth, re-starting it each time it choked on the high grass, cutting wonky lines in the field. Everything went well until he started on the hillside. The grass was still slick with morning dew. He struggled for control but ultimately lost and tumbled to the ground behind the mower<\/span>. <\/span>H<\/span>is body was a distortion of angles, his right leg twisted in an unholy geometry with his foot coming to rest near his head. Instinct overcame judgment and I dashed across the street.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAre you alright?\u201d I asked before catching myself. He was sitting up now and his right leg protruded about eighteen inches out the bottom of his pants. He shook his head. I held up my hand in stop motion and ran back across the street to grab Evie’s phone.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I held the phone up, a silicon and plastic talisman. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou have the translation app,\u201d the speaker said as he growled and groaned. \u201cLooks like my leg came off.\u201d He grabbed the ankle and pulled the thing out from the pant leg. It had disconnected at the knee. Strings of putrefied flesh hung from the knee joint. His head tilted up toward me.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI could use a little help getting up,\u201d he said. I couldn’t tell what his eyes were saying. The milky whiteness obliterated any hope of reading <\/span>those<\/span><\/i> windows. I looked toward the house.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou can get some gloves,\u201d he said. \u201cI understand. I can wait or crawl up the steps. I just might be able to get it reattached before the wife gets home.\u201d He smiled<\/span> but it was not pleasant. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYeah, let me run back and get those,\u201d I said. Things were moving too fast for me to think about how it was going to feel to touch that rotting flesh.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou kind of have to go easy,\u201d he said reaching for my gloved hand. Things pull off.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n When I got him to the steps he said, \u201cI can use the rail from here. Thanks. I\u2019ll reattach it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHow?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll stitch it back on wherever I can find some solid flesh and then duck tape the hell out of it. I was a surgeon, you know, before. . . The knee will be stiff but there’s no pain. Nerve endings are shot, you know.\u201d I laughed uncomfortably at his joke.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He managed to stagger up the steps and I went back to the porch. I wrapped the gloves in a plastic grocery bag and tossed them in the trash.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I saw him a few days later. The taped up leg was definitely stiff.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n All I knew about the undead, I got from television and opinions differed hugely from network to network. I researched on my own, looking for real medical papers. Stuff about projected lifespans. Outlooks. All the info I could find said we really don’t know. Scientists agreed it wasn’t reversible or curable. So far the only ways they could die was to cut off or smash the head or incineration. For whatever reason either<\/span> stopped the process. The weird combination of virus infected bacteria was the driver behind zombie disease and was resistant to both antibacterial and antiviral drugs. The early mass killings proved those poor saps could die. They looked and acted like all of the shuffling undead in the movies except for the flesh eating part. We didn’t know they were harmless.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bacteriophages infected a staphylococcus bacteria and it went downhill from there. Anybody could get it but certain populations had a propensity for the infection. For those who weren’t already infected, the inoculation was 93 percent effective in preventing the disease. A world wide effort to inoculate susceptible populations worked and new cases were getting rare<\/span>,<\/span> but we already had 10 million undead. Government and social organizations made motions to re-integrate the partially decayed back into society. Only the very rich neighborhoods kept them out.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We began a waving relationship almost like normal neighbors. I’d be in the yard working, he’d pull up in the truck and wave as he went up to the house. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He was touching up parts of the truck with a can of gray primer when I pulled up. I had the zombie translation app on my phone now. As I got out of the car I waved and said, \u201cHow’s it going?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He waved back and the phone squawked, \u201cNot bad. You?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>So-so<\/span>,\u201d I answered.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cTrying to make this POS look better,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cNot much hope though. Miss my beemer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYeah, my other car too,\u201d I said. \u201cIn my dreams.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo. I actually had one when I was alive. I was a doctor. Neurosurgeon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWow,\u201d was all I could think to say as I quickened my step toward the door<\/span><\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n We saw less of them as the stifling heat and thick humidity of August pushed us inside to the air-conditioned the house. We hadn’t seen the boy in weeks and their extended family or friends didn’t visit anymore. I was putting out the garbage on a stifling Monday evening. On his side of the road, he was struggling to wrangle a plastic garbage can down the steps. The heavy can was about to topple over on him. I don’t know why but I took the three steps across the street to help him. I already had gloves on. He nodded a grateful thanks. I pulled the phone from my back pocket and flicked on the translator app.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSure been hot,\u201d I said. He gave me a funny look, seemed to consider a thought.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe boy went to live with others, and, Jane, my wife, is not doing well. She’s decided to terminate.\u201d Congress passed the \u2018Twice Terminal\u2019 assisted suicide <\/span>law a month ago and<\/span> not even religious groups objected. State and Fed shared the cost of cremation. Wording was legalese but the gist of it read, that since they were once dead, assisting in a second termination was completely within the law.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I shook my head. \u201cSorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI don’t know if I can go on without her.\u201d Felt like I wanted to put my arm around him<\/span> but I resisted. \u201cI’ll get her through it and take care of some financial stuff and then do the process myself. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHard decision,\u201d I said. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe own the house<\/span>,<\/span> so I’m deeding it to the city for tear down.\u201d He paused. \u201cI appreciate you trying to be ‘normal’ with us. We don’t get that <\/span>often.<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I looked down at the dark pavement feeling small.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n END.<\/b><\/p>\n by R. Gene Turchin<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were having coffee on the porch when the first beat up truck arrived across the street. The screens in the sun room windows blur the view to the interior while allowing us to peek out uninhibited. We can be the nibby neighbors without the telltale lift of blinds or pulled curtain. The truck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2,8],"tags":[54,97,100,101,104],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-astounding-stories","category-zombie-tales","tag-living-dead","tag-zombie","tag-zombie-short-stories-walking-dead","tag-zombie-stories","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoundingoutpost.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}