Then she saw him, the cause of all this. Or what was left of him. A head, its hair matted with blood, was on the floor, facing away from her. The body that had supported it was nowhere to be seen. She approached the head slowly, circling it and then pushing at it with her toes so she could stare into its face. Yes, it was him. He had thought that he would be in heaven soon, but there was no heaven waiting for him in this new world.
She removed her jacket and kicked the head into the center of the cloth, hands shaking. She tied the corners together so that she could carry her burden along without having to touch it. She had to hurry, for not only would the others soon come back to life, filled with hunger, but she could hear the sounds of rescuers approaching as well, and both living and dead would only be obstacles to her now. She tucked the package under one arm, crawled through a shattered window, and ran down the tracks as quickly as she could in the opposite direction of the voices.
Back at the morgue, Paula unwrapped her parcel and put the head upright on a plate, balanced on its ragged neck. She knew that she might need to move it again, but she never wanted to have to touch it. She placed it on one of the operating tables, turning it carefully away from her, away from her father, so that all she could see was the back of its head. But then she turned it back again, so that she could watch it as she sat by her father. She needed to see the transformation when it came.
The sounds in the room had lessened since the dead first began to wake, but only by degree. The dead feet that had been pounding ceaselessly on the metal doors for hours had splintered, and the throats that roared their anger were wearing away. She imagined that if she could survive here long enough that she would see their bodies break down entirely, just like the systems that kept civilization humming seemed about to do. She wasn’t sure that she could get home again even if she wanted to. And she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.
She stared at what remained of a man who was willing to die for an ideology. Or, as it turned out, someone who was willing to do something even worse than that, not to die, but to choose a living, mindless death. He and others like him had hoped to bring down the workings of the modern world, but they did no such thing. The zombie plague did what they could not. Yet they still continued, not realizing that their bombs were pointless.
Night fell and morning came again, and there was no change, but then as night fell for the second day, the closed eyes of the terrorist’s head snapped open. In that instant, the sounds from within the refrigerated compartments stopped, as if the dead who were locked away sensed a brother outside who might help them. But no help would be forthcoming, for all the manless head could do was rage.
She looked at her father. He had not responded to the resurrection. She guessed she didn’t really expect him to. That wasn’t what this was about, answers. She dragged her chair forward to sit facing her attacker, who could do nothing but look at her with mindless anger.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How can you keep on doing something like this, knowing what you had to have known?”
It growled at her, grinding its teeth loudly.
“Killing yourself so that you can go to heaven is barbaric enough. But once you knew that all you’d be getting is this, how could you go ahead and do it anyway? The world changed, and you paid it no attention. To choose zombiehood? To make others into zombies? You’re dead forever now. I’m not sure that you were ever really alive to begin with.”
The head howled, pinning her with unblinking eyes.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me why you did this.”
She stood up, and took a step closer. As she did, the thing’s nostrils flared. It snapped its teeth, trying to reach her, but the gap between them was infinite.
“You’re not taking a bite out of me. You won’t ever be taking a bite out of anyone. Your death is as over as your life. There’s nothing left for you. So you might as well tell me.”
It rocked back and forth on its severed neck, but could gain no momentum.
“Tell me!” she shouted, and swatted at the head, which flew from the table and bounced several times on the floor, leaving several red splotches. The creatures behind the doors roared. She grabbed the head by its hair and lifted it up to eye level.
“I’ll never know, will I?” she said. “Never.”
Its answers remained the same as before. It was all senseless. She didn’t know whether she could live with that. There seemed little reason to change her earlier plans. She lifted her other hand near to the thing’s mouth. It snapped and snarled so ferociously that a tooth flew from between its lips and bounced off her chest. She could do it. She could do it quickly. One bite, and it would be over. She could no longer have death, but she could have something like it, and in a senseless universe, that would have to do.