Chivalry Is Dead

by Bennie Newsome

  I chose to go right—for no real reason, to be honest, I just thought I’d see where it led me.

  There were a few side rooms along the way, but they were either locked or there was no one there. I seemed to be in the basement level as I didn’t come across a single window while I was there. Thankfully, one thing I did find was an open laundry cupboard near the lift at the end of the corridor, its contents spilling out over the floor.

  I couldn’t work out why they would leave so many sheets and towels just lying on the floor in a heap. I wasn’t going to complain, though, as there were a few sets of pyjamas in there as well.

  After I’d dressed myself, I walked over to the lift and pressed the call button. I thought I’d be waiting for ages for it, but it made that “ping” sound almost immediately and the doors opened.

  Before I knew it, I was on my back, feeling the tiled floor slamming into my back. I called out in shock; the jarring pain that shuddered down my back was almost too much to bear, but I gritted my teeth. There were bigger problems to deal with.

  A snarling, furious face was directly over mine, my body pinned to the floor. My mind remembered the doors back in the morgue, and I realised that this person must be equally as strong to be able to hold me down so well.

  “Stop it!” I yelled. I was being battered by my attacker’s arms, and I suspect that I would have been bitten if my hands, placed firmly against a growling throat, weren’t keeping those teeth away from me.

  Abruptly, the attack stopped, and the face changed, became immediately more placid. It was in that instant I realised that my attacker, despite the boyish haircut, was female. The cheekbones, eyes and shoulders were too slim to be male.

  She was shorter than me by at least a foot and quite a lot slimmer—I was 6’ 4” and fairly stocky from my days playing rugby league—and we looked like polar opposites. Where I had dark hair and green eyes, she had blonde hair and blue eyes. I was still confused and nervous, she seemed calm and collected.

  As she climbed off me, I pushed myself up off the floor and checked that nothing was broken. In all honesty, I felt stupid more than anything; I tried to rationalise it as her being startled by me as the lift doors had opened. Seeing a guy, a lot taller than her, dressed in nothing but hospital-issue pyjamas, must have been a weird sight.

  “Sorry about that,” she said abruptly. “I assumed you were one of them.”

  I blinked in surprise; I had been all ready to give an apology myself, and yet here she was apologising to me. I couldn’t work out what was going on, so I just shrugged.

  “No problem,” I replied. “It could have happened to anyone.”

  One of “them? I thought. Who are they?

  It was strange; the woman had changed completely. A few seconds before, she had been ready to kill me, and I knew she could have done it. The rage...the anger...in her face was breathtaking, and I found myself wondering if I had looked like that to the people back in the mortuary.

  Was I that angry? I wondered. I can’t remember. I just ... Why can’t I remember?

  “What’s your name?”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  The girl snorted with laughter.

  “I doubt it,” she said sarcastically. “What were you thinking about?”

  I hesitated in replying; this girl was a stranger.

  But you want answers, don’t you? I asked myself. What’s stopping you?

  An answer immediately came to me: Because she tried to kill you a minute ago!

  I ignored it. What did I have to lose?

  “I was wondering what’s going on,” I admitted. “I don’t know what’s happened to me...and my name’s Ryan, in answer to your first question.”

  The girl shrugged disinterestedly, although I couldn’t work out whether it was disinterest at my name or at my worries.

  “Mine’s Alexandra,” she said, “but I’ll break your legs if you call me that. Alex will do.”

  I nodded. “Do you know what’s happening?”

  “Not a clue, my friend.” She smiled as my face fell. “Sorry. I don’t think that’s what you wanted to hear, was it?”

  “How did you guess?” I answered a bit too sarcastically. I instantly regretted it.

  “I was a psychologist...you know, before.”

  I thought I was confused before, but now I was even more confused.

  “What do you mean, ‘before’?” I asked her.

  She gave me an odd look, as if I were somehow stupid. “You know...before I died.”

  I didn’t react; my face froze as my brain tried to process what Alex had just said. Her eyes widened as she realised that I hadn’t yet come to the same realisation as her. I stumbled back in shock.

  “Ryan...” she said, “you’re...dead.”

  “I’m the most useless corpse in the history of corpses. I was just sick at the sight of those corpses in the morgue.”

  “That’s just your body getting rid of all of the stuff in the gut. You’ll be alright now; you might get one more reflux, just to clear out your system, then it’ll be gone for good.”

  I took my head out of my hands and frowned.

  “For a psychologist,” I snapped, “you’re not very sympathetic.”

  Alex laughed and shook her head. She drew in a breath of cold air and slowly released it as she looked out over the car park. We’d gone there after I had almost passed out. It was strange, because we’d only passed three people—two patients in gowns and slippers like me, and a female nurse. They had all nodded at us, apparently recognising us—although I didn’t recognise any of them, Alex returned the nod and smiled at each of them in turn.

  “It’s a lovely evening,” she said.

  I looked up. Yeah, it probably is...somewhere else, I thought. The night sky was clear; with no clouds in the sky, stars and the moon were casting a bright pall over the ground. Normally, I would have been fascinated by the sight of all this...but today, I couldn’t think of anything—except one thing.

  “I’m dead?”

  Alex turned to face me; her face was brightened up by a beautiful smile that was not what I expected to see, given the circumstances.

  “Why are you so happy?” I demanded. “You’re dead too.”

  Alex shrugged. “I’m still walking and talking, aren’t I? This way, I don’t have to worry about breathing and eating while I’m doing it.”

  That was the other thing that was taking some getting used to; I exhaled onto the palm of my hand, but couldn’t feel anything. All the air had been expelled from my body as I had hit the floor of the supermarket, and my dead body didn’t need it in order to...uh, survive.

  I chuckled at my bad joke.

  “See?” Alex said, the smile on her face broadening as she listened to my laugh. “Why worry? Let’s just enjoy it. We’re so much stronger and less dependent on human weaknesses.”

  At the mention of the word “human”, I felt myself tense. Bile blocked the back of my throat for a moment and I growled. My eyes darted around the empty, peaceful garden, reassuring my brain that there was no one there apart from us two. Only when I was fully reassured did I relax again.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I breathed. “Why do I get so angry when I think of...”

  I couldn’t finish the sentence, as the bile started to rise again in my throat; I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but no words could come out.

  I looked up at Alex, needing answers; the smile had vanished from her face and replaced—finally—by sympathy.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I pleaded. “You know, don’t you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” she replied. “You’re more alive now than you ever were. Your body feels...it knows what it wants. It doesn’t like the living...they feel wrong, don’t they?”

  Hating myself for admitting it, I nodded.

  “My wife…” I croaked. “My children. I—”

  I couldn’t control it any longer; I was on my knees, vomiting with all my might. My throa
t felt red raw with the violence of the nausea, the vomit and the hatred that was welling up inside me—but I still couldn’t stop being sick while I thought of my living, human family.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I demanded.

  I felt a hand on my back, gently comforting me; although the tears continued rolling long after the nausea stopped, I found the hand strangely comforting.

  “You’re free,” Alex said. “Enjoy it.”

  I took Alex’s words to heart. I saw my death and rebirth as just that; a new-found freedom. I fell into a new life...and forgot about the old one.

  I savoured the anger; no, relished it. I had never thought that death could be this much fun. I blame it on the virus—even now, after everything has stopped. All morality amongst the dead vanished overnight; we became killers. Hardened, angry, hating killers that sought to destroy life wherever it could be found.

  We failed.

  Life has a habit of continuing in the most annoying ways. Despite our best efforts, humanity survived. Scientists worked desperately on a cure and, despite our best efforts, partially succeeded. I say partially, because I’m still talking to you, aren’t I?

  The vaccine removed the hatred and anger from our genetic code and made us calmer. It removed the overwhelming nausea that many of us experienced whenever we thought of humans.

  It should have restored our moral code as well.

  But morality isn’t entirely genetic; it’s something that is learnt as well, from our family and friends. Being dead, and consumed with rage, we lost that sense—or, at the very least, it was overridden by that hatred.

  Each of the zombies had to relearn about morality. Many of us don’t want to admit it, but it doesn’t sit easy, the morality of the living—not anymore. I live in fear of being found out, of someone discovering that I just don’t care in the same way; that I feel so…so free.

  It bothered me, though. I’ve never been able to fully explain it; a part of me is sad that I didn’t just die when the vaccine worked its magic. I’ve spent a lot of nights wishing that death would just take me away into oblivion. I wanted a proper death, not this stupid half-death that I seemed to be living through—not caring about anything. I couldn’t bring myself to care and it occurred to me, one day out of nowhere, that I probably should.

  If I’m still alive…sort of, I thought, I should probably do something with it.

  Too many of my compatriots—my fellow zombies—just wandered round aimlessly. They slept wherever they could find a corner—it didn’t even have to be a comfortable corner, truth be told—and they just walked, either round and round in circles or in a straight line until they reached water…and didn’t stop even then.

  One day, something clicked inside me; I knew I wanted something else. I wanted to care about something again. If I was going to be stuck like this for eternity, then I thought I should have a purpose to my life...or death.

  I decided to find my family, and let that be my purpose. I needed to get out of this apathy towards…well, everything.

  The majority of people had moved into special camps during Armageddon to protect themselves and each other from the terrors going on in the surrounding countryside and towns. But now, after the terrors had faded, our roles in life were shifting; people were beginning to return to their homes and my kind were being rounded up like sheep and herded into pens barely big enough for human dignity.

  We’re not human, though, are we? I remember thinking one day as I walked somewhere along the east coast, across a barren landscape charred by spent flames. We’re decaying, rotting corpses that used to be human.

  I stopped right there in the middle of the field. All I could see ahead of me were the remains of a once-fertile wood, plus some slowly-rotting corpses that hadn’t yet been cleared away by the army.

  My family are at home, I realised. They’ll have gone home.

  Without any more thought, I began searching out my home. I was far away, I knew that, and had a long walk ahead of me. I walked past ash-field after ash-field, burial pit after burial pit—and half-filled towns blurred past me. I lost track of time, but to someone that’s dead, time doesn’t make much difference. One day is the same as the next.

  I ignored the fearful looks of the living; they were strange, now that I didn’t feel the nausea and anger when I even thought about them. Now they were just oddities, things on the periphery of my vision that I didn’t care about. I was focussed on one thing only; getting home to my town and to my family. I was curious to know my reaction when I saw them again—I was intrigued and worried in the same breath.

  I laughed. Breath. I can’t remember the last time I took one of those.

  I paused…and stumbled on my footing for a moment. Yes, I can. I was in that supermarket, talking about mayonnaise. Mayonnaise! That was my last breath.

  I hadn’t thought of that day in...a long time, and it felt odd to be thinking of it now, on the edge of a plague pit where endless corpses had been thrown in the aftermath of the war. The layer of earth that had been piled on the top was slowly collapsing in on itself as the spring rains fell. I was relieved that there weren’t any corpses showing through the thin covering; it would be like rubbing salt into the wound—that the people who had been killed here had been able to die, just die and leave their bodies behind.

  And here I am, still stuck in mine.

  I heaved a breathless sigh, turned away from the pit—and my memories—and carried on walking.

  Occasionally, humans would try to stop me; either because they felt sorry for me or because they wanted to attack me, angry for what I and others like me had done. I didn’t have the rage and hatred burning away inside me like I once did, and so I just kept on walking.

  A lot of people didn’t want me to just keep on walking; they wanted me to stop. For good. They just didn’t understand what it was like to be a zombie—but, then, neither did I, if I’m honest. No serious attempts had been made by scientists to study our condition, but I strongly suspected that pulling my limbs apart wouldn’t be enough to stop me from being...well, me—and conscious.

  Living humans didn’t understand that, and I lost count of how often I was attacked. I had learnt, during Armageddon, that I had to be careful about defending myself; dead people don’t heal. I had already lost two fingers on my right hand and my left ear had spent a long time hanging on by a thread before I got fed up with it and yanked it all the way off. I would never be able to heal, in the way that I used to before shopping for mayonnaise, so I had to protect myself.

  I hated it, having to fight, but fighting for my own survival meant I had to focus on staying alive—and it began to teach me that I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to live, for the sake of my family.

  As the days turned into weeks, and I met more people determined to harm me, that fear and anger started to change me. Whereas before, I would travel all through the day and night, not stopping for anything, I began to hide during the day, and stole a jumper with a hood so that, when I did travel, I wouldn’t be recognised.

  Although I didn’t recognise it at the time, this was part of my journey to rediscover who I was. When I travelled during the day, I had to hurt people to stop them from pursuing me. If I travelled purely at night, I reasoned, that would be less of a problem.

  I was beginning to care again. It made me feel alive.

  It was a couple of days before I thought I’d be home. The scenery was becoming more and more familiar with each passing hour, and I was feeling strangely nostalgic, remembering random portions of my old life. Driving out to my parents’ house, out here somewhere in the suburbs, or going to the Lakeside out-of-town shopping centre...or just going out for a drive with Becky, back when we were dating.

  It was late evening—about eight o’clock or so—and night was rapidly descending; I decided it would be safe to start walking again. I had hidden myself in an abandoned farm building, not sleeping—just...thinking about my family, my wife and beautiful twins. The nostalgia of th
e past few days had started bringing back feelings of desire for my wife. I also wanted to see my children; they would have grown so much, and surely needed their father in their lives.

  I hadn’t even been walking for twenty minutes before I reached a small village. It looked familiar; I hesitated for a moment, then realised that this was where I had taken Becky on our first date, to that very pub over there in the corner.

  “The Bull’s Head,” I muttered, chuckling as the memories came flooding back. I had been half-an-hour late picking Becky up because my mum couldn’t find the cat and she had asked me to help her find it. When I finally got to Becky’s house, she had initially refused to come out with me, but I had finally convinced her after promising that we could go wherever she wanted—and she chose here.

  The lights were blazing, and the sounds of laughter rang out from the beer garden at the back. I found myself taking a few steps towards it before I realised what I was doing; the smile dropped off my face in an instant and the brief surge in happiness was again subsumed by an overwhelming feeling of point-lessness.

  What the hell am I doing? I remember thinking. I’ll never lead a normal life. I’m a freak. Becky won’t want you back after all this—she’ll be disgusted by you. You’re dead, for Christ’s sake, you just don’t know how to die.

  I turned away, suddenly unsure of what to do. For a moment, I had been lost in the happy fog of memories and wanted to be there again, making new memories with the people I loved—and who had once loved me. But now...hearing how people were moving on with their lives—laughing, drinking, loving—I couldn’t honestly see how I fitted in.

  “Evening!”

  I was startled out of my maudlin reverie by the cheerful voice from behind me. I checked that my hood was still in place—it was—and it was still hiding my face. The tell-tale red eyes and pallid complexion would be instantly recognisable to anyone, even in this small village.