Day Thirty One : Incognito

Incognito

Definition

: with one's identity concealed

It really wasn’t easy being a zombie. Your flesh slowly becoming necrotic and falling off your bones,
the way it got so much harder to move faster than a shambolic shuffle, the constant craving for raw
meat. 

All those things though, i could just about cope with. Just about. I mean,  now that the government put
in place all those medical procedures to slow the decay of our bodies, the embalming which most
funeral homes offered for free (it was tax deductible and considered excellent training for newbies
when the corpse could actually tell them exactly what they were doing wrong. It also rapidly weeded
out the squeamish ones who clearly weren’t suited for a career with the dead) as well as the steel pin
procedure we could sign up for to get our joints and bones reinforced meant that unlife was just that
little more bearable and staved off the fear that we would soon dissolve into a puddle of liquidised
rotten meat - that was somehow still conscious.

So yes, in some aspects, being a zombie had become a little less daunting. 

In all other aspects, it totally sucked. 

Of course, I'm sure that if the zombie apocalypse had full scale world wide, things would be different.
Us zombies might have gotten more respect, seeing as 99% of the population would be zombies and
it’d be the living that would be forced to completely adjust their tiny pathetic lives to our convenience. 

But the zombie apocalypse didn’t happen, at least, not the way everyone expected to having been fed
a lifetime of zombie movies. True, a dangerous virus did escape a government lab and infect people,
turning them into zombies, which basically follows the plot of every zombie movie out there.

However, what was vastly different from the movies was the infection rate and the contagiousness of
the virus. 

The virus affected a mere 0.001% of the world’s population which taken collectively is a lot, but not so
much when you’re the only zombie in town, chomping down on frozen chickens in the freezer aisle of
the local supermarket and there’s an angry mob outside with homemade flamethrowers and grenades
outside because, thanks to the popularity of b-rated films and tv shows, they’ve been raised to believe
that the only good zombie is a blown to pieces zombie. 

No, 0.001% is most definitely not a big sum when you’re that zombie, or any of the other hundreds of
thousands of zombie murders that occurred worldwide after the initial outbreak. And they were
murders. Don’t you dare try to look me in the eye and tell me that they weren’t or mumble something
pathetic about how you were scared about it being contagious or the end of days or that we’d eat you.
(humans smell disgusting by the way so you were never even on our menu to start with).

Our bodies were transforming, mutating, dying and we had no idea what had happened to us. True,
we craved meat but we went to the supermarket and bought it like any other normal person.

Newsflash. We were scared too. 

And you still murdered us.

Hundreds of thousands of us you butchered - sliced apart, bludgeoned to death, shot through the
head, burned alive, blew up, oh hundreds of methods, each one more appalling that the last. 

Despite the fact we begged you not to. Despite the fact we pleaded with you for our lives. Despite the
fact that there was clearly enough of a person left in our shambolic shells to bargain, to discuss, to
converse like any other living, thinking being.

Despite the fact that we are people too.

You, made monstrous by your fear, tried to slaughter us all.

To this day, there has never been a case of a zombie attacking a human out of anything other than
self defense. We can’t. Our bodies are, quite literally, incapable of handling it. If the face of a strong,
healthy, living body that isn’t hampered by necrotic flesh, fragile bones and nearly non-existent
reaction times, we’re basically helpless.

But i’m sure you all found that out pretty quickly. Didn’t stop you though did it? Heck, it didn’t even
slow you down.

Murderers.

But I digress from my original point. The worst thing about being a zombie?

Trying to earn a living. 

***

Eventually, after about three months of pure terror and mobs roaming the streets, three things
became apparent. One, that a particular government had caused this mess in the first place with a
manmade disease/virus , two said disease/virus was not in any way shape or form contagious and
only affected those rare humans who had an unfortunate affinity with it (for the rest of humanity, I
heard that at worst some just got a harsh cold. Even many of these had been killed by panicked
members of society ‘just in case’ )and three, the most damning, it was becoming increasingly evident
that these zombies were not the monster zombies of the silver screen, that they were actually merely
humans struck with a terrible disease and that, in fact, they were the victims in all of this. 

The world’s governments finally stepped in and laid down the law, hard. Zombies were now a protected
species (‘species’) and all efforts were made to reintegrate them back into normal society.

The normal society that tried to pitchfork us. Ha!

They set up schemes, housing for those of us who had been chased out of our homes (housing
estates just for us so we would feel safe and comfortable among our ‘own kind’. Hmm, historical
parallels anyone?), poured funding into medical research to see if the damage caused could be
undone or halted at least and offered treatment freely in order to maintain our fragile bodies. 

Of course, the killing of us was now illegal but I'm sure in the darker parts of the world (closer than
you think) a dead body turning up dead again raised few eyebrows or questions. 

The biggest problem with being undead is money. It’s expensive to be undead. Our homes basically
have to be iceboxes, fitted with special cooling devices running 24/7 to help preserve our bodies -
which means we burn through a heck of a lot of electricity. We also go through a lot of clothes, as the
liquids seep out, even with the preservatives, and ruin them after a few wears. 

And don’t even ask me about the meat bill. 

Even with the various government subsidies, it’s insanely expensive. Despite the fact that working only
hastens the decay of your body, you need to work in order to pay for slowing down the process. 

A neighbour of mine, Ernest, invested in a large chest freezer. For 23 out of the 24 hours of the day he
lies in it. A box barely big enough for him to roll over in. 

I asked him how the hell he coped one evening, in the hour he permitted himself to walk about and i
came across him staring at the moon and the vast expanse of stars above. (we get good night views
round ours - no one wants to waste electricity and money on mere lighting when we can see in the
dark anyway.) Especially as we can’t even sleep. He said it was better now he had rigged up the wifi
so he got signal in the chest and could watch Netflix. The time didn’t drag so much. 

He admitted he had wanted a nice walk in freezer - like those post restaurants or butchers had but the
initial cost and expenditure thereafter was too high. What he received from the government wasn’t
nearly enough and he couldn’t really work as a mob had previously caught up with him and shattered
his left leg and arm, making him even more shambolic than the rest of us. He’d had the pinning down
but his bones had shattered into so many pieces that it was impossible to put back together. He could
get about his small back garden with a cane and braces but that was about it. Work was impossible.

So 23 hours confined in a dark space, daily, was his only option. 

Even if he was well enough to get a job, finding employment was hard. No one wanted to hire a
zombie, not even a relatively fit and healthy one like myself. 

I’d had plenty of options while i was alive. I was smart, well educated, motivated and great at my job. I
was headhunted regularly but I never accepted. I stayed loyal to the company and gave them my all. I
must have made (and saved) them a fortune in my time. I was one of the best employees they’d ever
had. 

When I asked if I could have my job back, they didn’t want to know. Despite the government trying to
enforce fair and diverse employment rules, there are plenty of loopholes if you know how to look. And
they knew where to look.

Even as a zombie, with my body like this, i could have done my job standing on my head and they
knew it. 

The HR manager wouldn’t even look me in the face and she mumbled into her lap that, unfortunately,
the vacancy had now been filled and perhaps they could contact me when another occurred.

I once held that woman’s hair back as she vomited into the staff toilets after one too many at the work
Christmas party and she tearily told me she’d just made out from Kevin in Customer Service in the
copier room. She made me promise not to tell another soul. 

I never had. 

Like many things, apparently that counted for nothing once you were undead. 

Eventually, as I knew I always would, I ended up at the one place I knew would hire me. 

Freakshow. The Carnival and Big Top run purely by zombies, from ride operators, performers to
management. See and marvel at the walking dead in a completely safe environment, all staff are
securely locked away in their glass sided cubicles - or far away on the distant stage. Gawp and
whisper and stare all you like without fear of attack or infection. Fun for all ages. 

On one hand, I loathed and despised the Freakshow for all it represented. On the other hand, I almost
had to admire Frank, the zombie owner, for, in his words, ‘making the best of a bad situation’. 

“We’ll always be freaks to them.” He told me in my interview. “We might as well make them pay for it.”

As much as I hated the thought of that, he was the only game in town that was hiring. And despite the
fact that his workers were put on display - like they were the freaks he proclaimed them to be for all
and sundry to laugh and stare at, he did try to treat them fairly. 

Due to my background, I mainly worked behind the scenes. However, every now and then I had to
provide cover for another worker if they were unable to attend that day for one reason or another. 

Today was one of those days. 

Unlike most mascot suits which were sweat inducing sauna hells, our mascot suits (Zoe the Zombie
with her tasteful green skin and pretty pink tutu and BowWow the zombie dog - not that there had
even been zombie animals, thankfully) had been fitted with the latest cooling technology in order to
protect us from decaying faster. It was actually quite refreshing, almost like being in a little fridge. 

Maybe Ernest could cope with this. I suddenly thought to myself. If he could sit in a chair or
something. Had to be better than sitting in a box all day at least.

“Mummy, mummy look!” a small child tugged at their mother’s sleeve, pointing at me. “A zombie!”

“Now, now sweetie.” the mother laughed nervously. “That’s just a pretend zombie, all the real zombies
are locked up remember?”

Ha! I thought to myself and wondered if I should ‘accidentally’ know the head of the costume off and
give her a right scare. I‘m a professional so I didn’t. 

I won’t deny that I had a blissful daydream about it though. 

“But!”

“Come along now, let go see the acrobats.” she tugged them away fiercely. “I heard they juggle with
their own limbs, won’t that be nice?”

I shook my head as they marched off. Did she even hear what she was saying?

My eyes dropped down to the child staring back at me. The irises of their eyes were so dark it could
be black and the faintest blush of green tinged their little fingernails. 

No one person questioned why no child zombies had been created. Perhaps they assumed something
about them that prevented the disease from infecting them. Certainly no Zombie had said anything to
the contrary.

Thing about children though, is that they’re constantly in a state of movement, growing and learning
about their environment. Their bodies changing day by day. Adapting.

I guess unlife always really does find a way.