Brains for the Zombie Soul (a parody) (4 page)

I tried to apply for unemployment benefits, but
being both dead and fired, I didn’t qualify.

First, I pursued job openings for accountants. I
got plenty of interviews, but employers many wouldn’t even meet
with me once I got there. They gave me excuses like, “I’m sorry, he
had a conflicting appointment,” or “He had to leave for a family
emergency. We’ll call you to reschedule.” Of course, they never
called back.

Then there were the excuses. Most of them boiled
down to, “You don’t have the qualifications we’re looking for,”
even though I had a master’s degree and several advanced
certificates. What they were really saying was, “Zombies aren’t
smart enough for this job.”

As time went on, I lowered my standards more and
more. After I was rejected for bookkeeping jobs, I applied for tax
preparer jobs, then bank teller positions, then customer service
associates, then general retail jobs, and finally even fast food
openings.

Eventually, I had applied to nearly anything. I
was living in a homeless shelter, relying on the food bank for
meals. Many times, even the soup kitchen wouldn’t serve me, asking
zombies to let living people who could die without food go
first.

When an opening in the paper was posted for a
general laborer to work in a rather dangerous position at the saw
mill, I applied to it like I would for any other job. I was
surprised when I was called in for an interview.

It was the most unusual interview I ever had. It
seemed like for the first time, they ignored the politeness of
pretending I was living, and instead focused on the fact that I was
a zombie. I went with it, and talked up the benefits to being
undead.

They also seemed sympathetic to my plight and
offered housing and meals as standard benefits. They hired me on
the spot, and I started the next morning.

When I arrived at 7 am, first a nice young lady
showed me to my bunk. It was in a cabin similar to one I stayed in
at camp when I was in grade school. It wasn’t anything special, but
at least I had a roof over my head. She also gave me a locker to
put my few meager belongings in.

Then she gave me a tour of the grounds. She
showed me where to clock in for the day and where the cafeteria
was. I got a cup of coffee. Afterwards, she handed me off to the
supervisor.

He was a gruff man with a blunt way of speaking,
but I thought that wasn’t unusual for this sort of work. He put me
to work running boards through a table saw.

The first thing I noticed were the condition of
the safety features. Most of the guards and precautions were
missing. The ones that were there were broken or working
improperly. They had told me it would be a dangerous job, and it’s
not like I could die.

At around noon, I noticed no one had left. I
asked the employee working on the machine to my right when the
lunch hour was.

“Lunch hour?” he said. He laughed dismally. “We
don’t get lunch.”

My stomach rumbled, but I was used to that and
kept working. I worked straight through until five o clock. Then I
shut down my machine and went to the door.

“What are you doing?” demanded the
supervisor.

“Isn’t it quitting time?” I asked.

“No, get back to work,” he yelled.

I went back to machine and kept ripping boards.
No one else left their machine. I was just as hungry and tired as I
was on the street.

After it had gotten dark outside, a zombie on
the other side of me fell asleep at his machine. He awoke with a
start when one of his fingers got caught in a belt and got ripped
off.

“It’s about time,” my neighbor said.

At the same time, the supervisor yelled,
“Quitting time!”

I wasn’t sure if I needed sleep or food more, so
I mindlessly followed the crowd and found myself in the cafeteria.
Someone handed me a bowl, and someone else filled it with a
spoonful of... something. It was brown and smelled meaty, but had
the consistency of oatmeal.

“What is this?” I asked someone after sitting at
a table.

He took the spoon away from his mouth and said,
“It’s better not to think about it.”

I took a taste. It was mostly disgusting. If I
had any choice, I wouldn’t have eaten it, but it wasn’t so bad I
couldn’t choke it down.

After “supper,” I followed the crowd back to the
cabins and collapsed at my bunk. Sometime in the morning, while it
was still dark, an air horn blew. My coworkers started to get up,
and I noticed none of them had gotten undressed or taken a
shower.

I expected to follow them to breakfast, but we
went straight back to work. This day was much like the last. We
worked straight through with no lunch or breaks until someone fell
asleep at their machine. This time was worse than the last. He was
at a sander, and he fell face first.

When everyone else went to the cafeteria, I
headed for the office. I would rather have been unemployed than
work in these conditions. Before I got to the building, a guard
stopped me. “Get back to the cafeteria,” he said in a stern
voice.

“No,” I said. “I’m quitting.”

He laughed humorlessly. “No you’re not. There’s
no quitting.” Then he grabbed my arm and forcefully escorted me
back to the food line.

It went on like this for weeks. One coworker
committed suicide by putting his head through a machine. After
that, enough safety guards were put on the machines so heads
couldn’t fit through. That also meant that there were fewer
accidents, so we had even longer days.

One day, it was still morning, at least as far
as I could tell, and I was cutting boards as usual. Sounds of a
commotion came from outside. The supervisors left to investigate,
so we took the opportunity to go outside and actually see some
sunlight too.

The police were raiding the compound, arresting
anyone living. I heard the captain having a conversation on the
radio about what they should do with us. “You’ve already got
shelter for them. Shut down the mill, but anyone who wants to stay
in the housing there can. I’ll call the Red Cross and get some
food, clothes, and showers set up in there.”

Eventually, the old mill was turned into the
Occupational Rehabilitation Center for the Differently Animated.
While wood products were still produced there, the conditions were
safe and pleasant, the work days were reasonable, and zombies were
matched to jobs that suited their qualifications.

I got a promotion. I am proud to be the new CFO
of ORCDA.

(back to
TOC)

****

Operation Reanimation

The third world war introduced many new
types of warfare to the global arena. Perhaps the most incredible
was Operation Reanimation.

Although technology led the way, there were
still many scenarios where troops were needed. As it is in war,
many soldiers were wounded, killed, or lost. Messages of condolence
were sent to families, who sometimes grieved over a loved one whose
body was not able to be interred.

The military provided a number of excuses why
the body could not be provided. The soldier was captured by the
enemy and merely a video was presented with evidence of the
soldier’s death. No, the video could not be shown to the family, it
would be too disturbing, and it was top secret. Or perhaps the
soldier was killed in a roadside bomb, and his body was burned
beyond recognition. Or he could have been caught in a fire and
there were no remains left to recover. Or sometimes they simply
told the families that the soldier was missing in action and
presumed to be dead. In desperation, the family would keep their
hopes up that their loved one could eventually come home.

In some of these cases, while what the families
were told was partly true, the explanation for the missing body was
false. Instead the body was taken to a lab for military
purposes.

Scientists had developed a way to reanimate the
bodies, essentially making them living again. They saw it as
recycling soldiers. In addition, since they were dead and certain
conditions were not necessary to survive, the top secret operation
didn’t feel the need to provide the amenities that living soldiers
required. During the course of Operation Reanimation, these
recycled soldiers were not given meals, times of rest, or
consideration for their mental state.

The mental and emotional state of these zombies
was fiercely debated. Some personnel merely saw them as walking
corpses.

The people who abused them as such stood by the
fact that they were not mindless, but instead full of rage, which
needed to be targeted at the enemy. In reaction to this theory,
they would dress up in enemy uniforms and torture the zombies. They
would treat them like fighting dogs, channeling their
aggression.

Finally, the scientists and assistants who often
worked with the zombies realized that most of the reanimated
actually retained not only their mental capacity but also the
personalities of the people they were before they were killed. They
campaigned for humane treatment and rights for zombies, but were
denied.

This last group was right.

When the zombies were put out in the
battlefield, many of them were scared and conflicted. With limited
armor and extreme conditions, many refused to fight. They were
brought back to camp and “given another chance.” Before they were
sent back out again, they were trained to hate the enemy, abused,
and finally told that they could be heroes if they fought. And if
they refused to fight, they would be executed for cowardice.

Due to their fragile after-life mental state,
most of these soldiers were in fact put to death. Since they were
designed to be the perfect soldier and therefore by definition hard
to kill, most were executed in ways no longer authorized by the
Geneva Convention. The two most popular styles of execution were by
guillotine or by forcing the victims onto their knees and shooting
them point blank in the back of the head. Then, since the cause of
death explained to the families did not match the fatal wounds of
the soldiers, the bodies were cremated en masse.

When Operation Reanimation was finally leaked,
the public was outraged. First, they insisted that their zombie
relatives be sent back to them. They were told that none had
survived, although it was widely believed that the remaining
zombies were executed once the operation was outed.

Then, by public demand, the president of the
United States officially pardoned these soldiers, saying they were
honorable upstanding members of the military and not the cowards
they were made out to be. He also posthumously awarded these
zombies Purple Hearts and Medals of Honor.

Now, plans are in the works for a memorial in
Washington D.C. for these special zombie soldiers, the victims of
Operation Reanimation.

(back to
TOC)

****

A Soldier Back from War

I thought the journey to the front lines
in the Middle East would be the longest trip of my life. I was
wrong. The trip back home was the longest.

It wasn’t the ride in the caravan through a zone
known for its roadside bombs that was the longest. It wasn’t the
walk through the Kuwait airport in uniform, the wound on my face
quite evident, while being stared at by the local people. It wasn’t
the flight to Dubai. It wasn’t even the flight from Dubai to New
York. It wasn’t the time waiting on layover. Nor was it the flight
from New York to Indianapolis. The bus ride from Indianapolis to
Bloomington was short compared to the rest of the trip.

No, the longest part of the trip back home was
from the time I switched over to the public bus until I got to the
Deeters’ front door. But I had made a promise to a dying man, and I
had him to thank for saving my life when I couldn’t save his.

I slowly walked from the street to the front
door. There was a young boy playing in the back yard. He stopped
what he was doing and stood at the fence next to the house to watch
me approach. When I got closer and he was able to get a good look
at me, he ran into the house screaming for his mother. I continued
to the front door.

I didn’t knock. I couldn’t bring myself to raise
my knuckles to the door, and I knew my presence would be known
anyway. Shortly after I reached the door, it was flung open and a
hunting rifle was pointed right between my eyes.

“You can’t take my brains or my son, zombie!”
the woman screamed.

I held up my hands and stepped back to show that
I meant her no harm. “I don’t intend to do anything to you,” I
said. “Please, are you Mrs. Deeter? If so, I just need to talk to
you.”

It was at that point she saw the fatigues I was
wearing and lowered the gun. “Yes. I’m sorry,” she said. “Won’t you
come in?”

I followed her inside. The boy was peeking
around a corner, and when he saw me, he started screaming, “But
mommy, a zombie!”

“It’s okay honey,” she said, taking his hand.
She led him away, down a hall. “Just play in your room a while,
okay?” I heard her say.

As soon as she came back into the foyer, I was
startled by a knock on the door behind me. “Excuse me a moment,”
she said, and went to answer the door.

By the greetings they exchanged when she
welcomed the older couple in, I could tell they were happy to see
each other. “Have you heard anything from Alec?” the older lady
said, but immediately stopped dead in her tracks when she saw
me.

“Maybe we should all go into the kitchen,” said
Mrs. Deeter. We followed her into the other room and sat ourselves
around a small kitchen table while she prepared coffee.

“Are you here about my son?” asked the
gentleman.

“Is your son Alec?” I asked. He nodded. I said,
“Yes, I am.” The older lady started crying.

“I served with Alec in Afghanistan,” I
explained. “I was a medic. A suicide bomber attacked a church that
Alec was stationed at. He was hurt in the explosion.”