I have no idea who I am.
I hang out in a bar a lot. It's one of those basement bars that were fashionable in a city that used to be so teaming with life. Somehow, hiding out in a basement in an empty building amongst so many other empty buildings seems as sane an answer to what's happening in the world as any other. And there are a few of us here. A few, lonely souls gathered together because it seems right to reside in a place that used to be so full of conviviality and warmth. We are drawn from all walks of life it seems. From what the others are wearing, I sometimes make up stories about them in my head. Who was he, in the football sweater and jeans? Who was she, wearing an apron and one high-heeled stiletto? Who am I, dressed to impress in a suit and tie? There's not a lot else to do in these dark days. Mostly we just stand around and stare at each other, at the walls, the empty and broken bottles, and occasionally, we groan.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I'm dead, dude.
And not in the classical non-corporeal, wafting ghost-ily around the place way. This is no awesome haunting, with lights and flashes and some medium trying cast out my evil spirit. No, those of us that are left are way, way too fleshy for that. I have no memory of what happened to me, to us. Compared to the others, I think I look relatively whole. Sometimes I wander into the restroom and gaze reflectively into the moulded mirror for hours, maybe even days. Aside from the grey pallor and steel-shine eyes, I am more or less human-looking; more or less intact.
The others – not so much. They have missing piece of flesh, missing limbs, exposed, desiccated abdominal cavities. A couple have missing faces. We're like a ghoulish, Christmas tableau.
Did I mention that it's Christmas? It's always Christmas. You can tell because there's a tree, and tattered decorations across and around the bar. Sometimes the electrics flicker to life (possibly as the result of a generator sputtering awake on some long forgotten cycle) and the tree lights up, the jukebox clicks on and the bar is filled with music – Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and some choir of too-enthusiastic women singing Frosty the Snowman.
There should be ooes and ahhs from the clientele. The lights and the music should move us but it doesn't. I have no memory of anything before this. I have no idea why I cling to this place, this bar, this subterranean holiday hell. Am I waiting? We, the Dead, have the patience of eternity here. Patience, that is, until the hunger overtakes us. When that happens, a few of us go foraging. We drag our heavy feet up the steps to street level, push our way through the overturned cars and the detritus of living and we hunt.
Seriously, what happened here? A war? A plague? What descended upon humanity that wiped us clean from this great city, aside from the last few Living that have banded together at the Yankee Stadium? What happened to leave me here, existing, an affront against nature? What possibly could have led to this? My brain is a blank, just as my blood is sluggish black ooze now in my veins. Something keeps me together, keeps us together, but we're like the bar - we're running on stuttering backup power. We don't walk, we shamble and limp. When we catch the scent of the Living, we are relentless. A group of them are holed up a couple of blocks down Amsterdam and we can smell them from here.
We hunt them. We consume the living in order to stretch out our meagre existence. I feel no fear, no guilt, no regret. Even though anyone still alive is bound to be armed, bound to take a few of us Dead with them, still I stand outside their apartment and gaze up at the flickering light from the window and I crave the taste of sweet blood on my lips, the magical firework sensation of brains on my tongue.
It begins to snow.
I'm never that quick to begin with. Although I can think, can construct intelligent prose in the confines of my own skull, it never seems to translate very easily into externals. Oh, I can talk – monosyllabic and grunting, a form of communication that's atrophied because the other Dead can't converse at all. I understand language but I can't read it. Words and letters are just unknowable glyphs to me. I don't even remember my own name, let along that of my companions. I wonder how much goes on inside their heads, my fellow bar-carrion. I wonder for whom and for what they are waiting.
Are we waiting?
Standing outside the apartment that contains a few living souls, I know it must be cold but I don't feel a thing. My suit is quickly speckled in tiny white specs of snow, covering the dark material and the spatters of dried gore; covering the obscene evidence of my crimes and making me clean and new and sparkling. How many people have I killed and eaten? How long have I been here? I have no idea, but somehow I appreciate this brief benediction from heaven.
Suddenly we surge forward and I get jostled to the rear as our scavenging party races up the stairwell, pushing through the reinforced doors like they are paper. I'm aware of my strength – the power of my fists, hardened like petrified-wood. I can rip apart a living, breathing human like tissue if I don't get a bullet in the brain first.
It's carnage from the first moment. The pop-crash of gunfire should hurt my ears, but even the concept of pain seems alien to me now, either for me or for my victims. I can't empathise. In fact, I could almost hate the people I eat, if I was capable of feeling any emotion at all. I guess it's hypocritical for me, a guy who could almost pass for human, to distain human life so. But when their life-force is all around me, like the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree, it wakes something in my gut, some need, some desire, and I roar. I grab the first guy I see – there's terror in his eyes, I'm close enough to the life force to recognise that emotion – and something else. Recognition? Horror? I sink my teeth into his throat and his death is quick, clean and efficient. An orgiastic torrent of blood gushes across my face and I'm practically bathed in it, which makes it tricky for me to get a good grip on him, smash his skull back against the hard, concrete floor and feast on the treasure within.
I'm so caught up in my prize that everything shrinks down to a point, this moment which seems bright and red and alive, so different to the hours, days and years spent locked in the colourless limbo of my Death. I don't know how long I spend eating him, this man who was somebody's friend, somebody's husband, somebody's father, but finally I finish and look up. It's then that I see her, a Living woman, not huddling on the floor or firing wildly like the others, but standing stock-still, handgun raised, choosing her targets carefully and deliberately, not wasting a single shot.
I see her, and it could be the taste of cerebellum still on my tongue, or some long-dormant holiday spirit, but something stirs in my gut. I hiss, a string of syllables that stream from my lips like somebody's twisted the cap from a beer bottle. "Schhhhhh."
She turns, her dark hair framing her face, her blue eyes burning, and she points the barrel of her gun right at me, without flinching, without hesitation. What must I look like to her? A frozen, frightening apparition, all white and red, covered in snow and gore. And maybe this is what I've been waiting for. Maybe this is finally the end?
I close my eyes.
