No Tears for the Dead

No one knew what had set things in motion, they knew only what the ultimate result of that unknown trigger had been; to the world and the people who had once inhabited it. She'd been far from television and radios when the end had arrived, and hadn't been privy to what she assumed must have been frantic news bulletins and evacuation orders. Sometimes when boredom set in-and boredom had, unfortunately, become her most frequent state of mind-she mulled over what sorts of theories and hypotheses the educated elite had put forth during those first few weeks to explain what was happening around them. Radiation, biological or chemical warfare, a natural virus…those were a few of the possible explanations that she thought seemed the most reasonable, but then again, people probably hadn't been satisfied with a reasonable explanation. What rational, natural process could cause the dead to return to life anyway?

Knowing the number of conspiracy theorists out there, she wouldn't have been surprised if more eccentric causes had been suggested as panic and desperation sat in. The religious fundamentalists had probably had a field-day before they'd been forced to worry about their own survival. In a way, she was grateful she hadn't had to deal with any of that- people ranting about it being God's punishment on a sinful world or the sci-fi crazies spouting equally ludicrous theories about hostile aliens causing the chaos so they could take over the world while humanity was distracted.

In truth, she supposed it really didn't matter `how' it had all started in the first place. Things were the way they were, and crying about it would be about as useless as sitting down and having an empty debate about the hows and whys of everything.

The faint chirping of birds distracted her from her thoughts then, and she lifted her head to gaze out the partially broken window she'd been crouching behind for what must have been several hours. The light filtering in from the outside world perked her interest, as well as the faint mist rising from the pavement. It had been dark when she'd broken into the building, and raining, but now it seemed the rain was over.

Might as well move on since the sun was up, she decided, rising to her feet and ignoring the creaking of her stiff limbs. She'd long since discovered that it was safer to travel during the day; there was far more of a chance of having a dangerous encounter at night, and she'd always liked to think of herself as a practical person-at least most of the time…there `had' been an instance or two when she'd demonstrated less than-impeccable intellect, but it wasn't like it was anything she could fix 'now'.

Sighing, she pulled open the battered door, pausing only a moment to cast a brief glance over one shoulder. Not like abandoned hardware stores were luxury accommodations anyway.

Leaving her temporary shelter behind, she made her way deeper into what once had been a small, pleasant-looking town in the northeastern United States. She was relatively sure she was somewhere in upstate New York, but thus far hadn't come to a town she was familiar with; having originally been from Massachusetts herself.

Rather depressing if you stopped and allowed yourself to think about it for too long, the notion crossed her mind as she walked down the middle of what used to be the main street through the quaint hamlet. Granted, it was somewhat nice not to have to worry about being ran over by a speeding car or being forced to listen to the raucous, rude honking of irritated motorists, but if the trade-off for that convenience and peace was the empty streets littered with discarded newspapers and abandoned vehicles, and the rows of forlorn shops forever waiting for shoppers who were probably never coming back- she wasn't sure it was worth it, not at all.

Abruptly, she came to a halt; nostrils flaring as she took in a scent that seemed out of place in the empty-seeming town. Amid the fresh, clean smell of lingering rain and the first few flowers of spring that were already beginning to come up between the cracks of the ruined sidewalks, there was a taint of something nature had never produced-gunpowder.

Suddenly on the alert, she chose her steps more cautiously now, moving off of the main street and keeping to the sides of the deserted buildings should the need to seek cover present itself. Pressing on, albeit at a slightly slower pace, she continued her journey through the settlement. Eventually she detected faint sounds coming from an alleyway a few meters ahead, and she paused; gaze drifting downwards once she'd reached her impulsive destination.

Rainwater had flowed out of the narrow space between two shops and formed a decent-sized puddle at the junction of two stretches of sidewalk, but the glistening fluid was not the clear, transparent color it should have normally been, it was clouded with ribbons of dull red, and particles of larger, thicker things.

The sounds became more distinct as she pondered the unsettling sight of the scarlet-tinged water, and when she lifted and turned her head in order to glance down into the alley, a part of her deep inside knew what she would see before she even completed the motion.

The storm of the night before had apparently not been enough of a deterrent to the raiding party; the remnants of which lay before her now. Two, perhaps three men- though it was hard to get a completely reliable estimate simply by observing the mutilated remains that a much larger group was currently occupying themselves with. A balding man who seemed to have been in his late forties at death possessively clutched a severed arm to his chest as he chewed on the half-eaten wrist; giving a growling sound of warning as another of the pack seemed a little too interested in his prize.

There were six or seven others besides the two squabblers, crouched over the flayed open torso of one of the once-living scavengers, so many in fact that it was rather impressive that they'd somehow managed to navigate the narrow alley and find enough room for all of them. A black woman in her early thirties, a red-haired girl who'd probably been around nine years old, a teenage boy with blood-stained sand-colored curls; whatever prejudices they might have possessed when breath filled their lungs had long since dissipated, and they fed with relative harmony in each other's' presence, only showing a hint of what might have been called aggression or displeasure when another tried to take a particularly choice morsel they had been reaching for themselves.

The acrid smell of gunpowder was stronger here amid the coppery, sewer-like stench of exposed bowels and viscera. A battered rifle lay discarded just outside the mouth of the alley, and a few feet in lay the unmoving hulks of the two revenants the now-dead men had managed to bring down before apparently being cornered in the alley and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the undead. These two were never going to get up and walk again, she mused, glancing at the half-shattered skull of one and the bullet-pierced forehead of the other. Reaching down, she took the gun in her hands and checked it, finding it empty of ammunition. How desperate for supplies must they have been to have chanced a night-time raid with so little in the way of weapons, she wondered inwardly as she tossed the now-useless gun back to the bloodied ground. Maybe they'd thought the storm would have covered their movements, but when trying to evade hunters who didn't need to worry about exposure or the other dangers that their living counterparts were faced with, their decision had been brave at best, outright stupid at worst.

And very much unsuccessful in the end as well, she mused with a weary sort of resignation, eyeing the garish remains that were too badly mutilated to ever rise again. The gory sight of the dismembered corpses the restless dead were still consuming no longer made her retch like it had in the beginning, but it didn't mean she enjoyed such a macabre spectacle either. It was just an unpleasant fact of existence she'd been forced to accept if she wanted to continue on herself with her sanity still intact.

The messily occupied undead were taking no notice of her, but the thudding slam of a door she hadn't yet noticed, set into the side of one of the alleyway buildings only two or three feet away- brought her to sudden and complete attention. At first glance, one might have thought the man stumbling out into the early morning sunlight was a miraculous survivor of the ill-fated scavenging party; his clothes for the most part were clean and undamaged, and his flesh lacked the grayish pallor to it that many of the others in the alley possessed. But that first impression was incredibly misleading. Clearly, he `had' been a survivor, at least of the initial strike that had reduced his companions to the morning meal.

He'd apparently tried a final desperate measure and had broken into the side entrance of a small fabric store to seek shelter from the death that had closed in from behind him. His pursuers had not followed him- perhaps they'd been content with the bounty his less fortunate companions had provided. But he hadn't escaped completely unscathed himself. As he emerged fully into the light, she saw the torn sleeve of his shirt and the gaping wound on his left arm; the flesh torn by blunt, once-human teeth that hadn't been designed to rip into struggling prey. The bite, as nasty-looking as it was, by itself wouldn't have been enough to end his life had it come from a natural creature or a living human, but even the tiniest of nips from the walking dead was enough to infect, and the former survivor had probably died sometime before dawn; his narrow escape proving ultimately futile in the end.

Dull brown eyes that held a glazed, unfocused look to them turned her way; the blank expression of the newly reanimated man seeming to study her for a moment before turning aside in obvious disinterest; the sounds of the feeding further down the alley drawing his attention as he stumbled towards them to join in; bloodying his mouth on the remaining flesh and tissue of what could have been his friends or even members of his own family only a few short hours before.

Feeling not so much disgusted as disheartened, she turned her back on the gory tableau and left the alley behind, continuing on into the town now that she had discovered the source of the gunpowder. Her own clothes had seen better days, and it was that fact that guided her steps into a second-hand clothing store. No one, living or previously dead, challenged her as she entered the unlocked shop, and she was free to browse the racks as she would have been back in her own hometown- before civilization had crumbled and the laws of nature itself had turned upside down.

Finding a pair of jeans and a simple green blouse that matched her size, she changed in the middle of the store- not seeing much point in hiding herself in one of the fitting booths since there was little to no chance of anyone coming into the store to view or be offended by her lack of modesty, at least, no one who would care about or probably even understand what she was doing. And if the would-be gawker had still had a heartbeat, she doubted they would have wanted to watch her undress anyway, given her condition.

Oh, not that she looked like some of the outright horrors she'd seen during her travels south… as she finished fastening her jeans she straightened up to begin the tedious process of buttoning up her new shirt; casting a reluctant glance in the floor-length mirror that sat propped up against the wall just in front of her. Her shoulder-length brown hair was slightly wavy but otherwise non-descript, her features clean and well-placed enough to make her pretty, though no stunning beauty. There were no dramatic wounds or mutilations marring her slender form; a little too skinny even from before, no missing limbs or exposed bone to provide a blatant give-away of what she had become. There were a few small scratches here and there, but those had been caused by the branches and underbrush she had apparently staggered through during those first early days.

The eyes that met her gaze in the mirror were remarkably clear and lucid; a pale blue that seemed no different than the eyes of the transformed survivor in the alley must have once looked. But there was a drawn look to her features that set her appearance…off, and her skin was just a little too pale to be healthy, or natural. And if one were to look closely enough at her, they would soon notice something else that didn't seem right about the young woman…namely, the fact that she didn't breath as she finished the menial task of putting her new clothes on and gave her reflection one final, cursory glance before turning to make her way out of the abandoned store.

Yes, even though some quirk of fate or cruelty of the divine had left twenty-two year old Genevieve Bloughton as quick-witted and morally conscious as she'd been before the world had gone to hell, she was still as physically dead as the revenants gorging on the repulsive feast in the alley only a few blocks away.

...

Like many a woman before her, Genevieve's problems had begun with a man. Richard had been the handsome, all-American boy from a well-to-do family that they claimed was every girl's dream, and he'd wanted her.

Gen had been raised by her mother- a beautiful woman from an old, wealthy English family who'd cut their daughter off when she'd scandalized them by running away at the tender age of eighteen with a poor as dirt American journalist. She'd never met her father, and her mother almost never talked about him. They'd only stayed together for a few years, because she apparently missed the luxuries that money could provide her, and had went in search of, as they say, greener wallets.

With her looks and accent- which men found charming- it wasn't hard for her to find a number of benefactors willing to support her over the years, and so they'd lived comfortably. Gen, knowing that none of the seemingly endless parade of men who came and went through their apartment was her father, learned at an early age to stay out of the way and to keep herself occupied with her own pursuits.

Thankfully, while she hadn't inherited her mother's stunning beauty, she did have a talent she could find solace in- her music. Flute, violin, piano; if it could produce music, it seemed she could play it, and play it well.

That was how she'd met Richard in fact, her junior year of college. He played the violin because his parents expected their only son to display at least some degree of culture- Genevieve played it because she loved it, and it showed in her performances.

When they first started dating, she could sense the undercurrent of disapproval from his family, even though they tried their best to hide it behind fake, painted-on smiles. Coming from a disowned, middle-class single mother with a…reputation, Gen had always gotten from them the feeling that she just wasn't good enough; not pretty enough, not rich enough, not connected enough- just plain not good enough for their precious son.

It had kept a faint line of unspoken tension running through their relationship, no matter how many times he promised her that he didn't care what anyone thought.

And so they'd stayed together, and Genevieve had thought she was happy, ignoring the doubt in her gut that quietly told her that something wasn't right.

Richard, it seemed, had gone out of his way to reassure her everything was fine. The camping trip to Ontario to celebrate their anniversary had even been his idea, though she knew he hated camping and anything that had a chance to get his clothes or nails dirty in general.

She should have known it was too good to be true.

...

If her heart still beat, it would have stopped at the sight of Boston.

Boston, wonderful, bustling Boston, the city she'd been born and had grown up in, had been hit hard by the catastrophe. The same desolate, ghost-town feel that had predominated in the small towns she'd traveled through on her way was even more pronounced here.

And why wouldn't it be…she mused grimly, glancing around at the eerily quiet streets, it only made sense. The larger the population, the bigger the initial outbreak. The undead that had risen then had had more people to attack, who in return would have reanimated if their bodies had not been too badly damaged.

No…Gen had a sinking feeling that the only places living humans would have had a chance at surviving were the very fringes of civilization.

Of course, she herself had been in such a place when all this had started, and she'd still died, but not because of the walking dead. No, her death had come from sheer stubbornness and stupidity.

Still…no matter how bleak the chances, maybe it was possible that someone had made it, even here.

It had taken weeks on foot to reach Boston. She hadn't dared take a car, despite the abundance of abandoned ones she'd found. Her one and only encounter en route with the living had come in the form of a small raiding party, similar to the one that had been decimated and devoured in the town she'd stopped in for a change of clothing some time before.

Feeling hopeful, she'd taken a step towards their battered pick-up truck, but before she could call out one of them had taken a shot at her with his rifle.

Surrounded and ignored by the horde of walking corpses, she supposed she couldn't blame them for assuming she was one of them, but in an odd way, it had still stung. Thankfully, his aim had been bad, and his attention was soon diverted by the mobs of revenants that were all-too interested in their arrival. She'd pulled back into the shambling crowds, not wanting to risk him getting luckier with his second shot.

On foot or not, she did have an advantage over a living survivor. She didn't get hungry or thirsty, didn't have to stop to sleep. The only times during her travels she'd sought shelter was during heavy rain, and that was more for the inconvenience of her clothes getting wet and her vision being obscured than from any true sense of discomfort.

And now that she was finally here…

With a feeling of foreboding, she let her steps take her down the same streets and sidewalks she'd wandered since she was a child; the achingly familiar shops and apartment buildings completely transformed, perhaps forever.

Windows had been smashed here and there- the contents of the small grocery store on the corner a block from her mother's apartment looted, probably by people grabbing supplies before fleeing the city.

On the outskirts of town, it hadn't been so bad. None of the restless dead had been anyone she'd recognized, but here…

Mr. Grayson, who'd run the candy shop that was the source of some of her few truly happy childhood memories, and who'd always gone out of his way to save and sneak her special treats, wandered aimlessly behind his counter- his right arm barely attached by a few scraps of skin from what had apparently been a savage attack while he still drew breath. Other ragged wounds riddled his body; exposing bone in places. He'd probably bled to death, and it was obvious he'd been fed upon to some degree before he'd reanimated. The walking dead tended to lose interest in their prey when it got cold enough.

Mrs. McCall, the sweet-natured, middle-aged lady who'd made her living with a little snack and lunch stand now scrabbled impotently at the latch that held the door closed with hands that were missing a few fingers, but was otherwise not as badly mutilated as Mr. Grayson had been. She paused, seeming to regard the snack stand hatch with something resembling confusion before batting at the lid again in an endless repetition, as if expecting the same awkward efforts to yield different results.

They did that a lot, Gen had noticed; while many of the reanimated dead tended to walk aimlessly around the area they'd died or revived in, some seemed fixated on repeating an action they'd done while alive. She'd seen a man, obviously once a gas station attendant when breath filled his lungs, clutch a nozzle in his hand- lifting and jerking it towards the car that was no longer there and would never be there to receive the non-existent fuel the hose had once contained. As mindless as they were, she'd often wondered, did that mean they had some degree of memory?

There was no sign of anyone, living or otherwise, when she stepped through the front door of the apartment building she shared with her mother. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, listening intently. Nothing…no sounds at all save for the rustle of the wind through the dead leaves and desiccated newspapers that littered the once pristine tiled floors.

She climbed the stairs slowly, in no hurry to find whatever she was going to find. Her mother had always had a man taking care of her, she reasoned, and when she'd left, as hurried as her departure had been, she'd been seeing a relatively rich one that seemed smitten with her. In the best of all worlds, maybe, when things had started to get bad, he'd left, and taken her with him to someplace…safer.

At last, no matter how deliberately she'd measured her steps, she stood in front of the apartment door, hesitating before she tried the knob. Finding it unlocked, she felt a surge of hope. Surely it was unlocked because no one was there anymore.

Pushing open the door and going inside, Genevieve looked around the living room. No signs of violence or even a struggle, no hint that anything had been stolen or ransacked either. All was as quiet as the lobby had been.

Suddenly though, a flicker of movement caught her attention from the hall that led to her mother's bedroom, and she turned her head; immediately regretting that she had done so.

Josephine Bloughton had remained beautiful into her middle years, and she was still beautiful even in walking death. Her curly auburn hair spilled loose down her back, her pale skin was unmarked by disease or trauma, but her once vibrant blue eyes were as cloudy and unfocused as any other revenant that Genevieve had seen during her travels. But…how had she died?

The young woman's hands tightened into fists as she watched what had once been her mother hesitate just inside the living room, peering at her the same way an animal would when confronted with an unknown creature. There was no hint of recognition or higher thought in those blank eyes; just the same instinctive evaluating glance that any of the reanimated dead tended to give her before her regard dropped in disinterest- sensing somehow that she was neither threat nor food.

Seeing that the older woman was clad in one of the long, flowing nightgowns she had always favored, she stepped past her and went down the hall into her bedroom. If violence hadn't ended her mother's life, and she'd been as healthy as she'd been when she'd left her…then…

The answer came in the form of an empty bottle of the same prescription sleeping pills she'd been using for years; a bottle that had been almost full the last time she'd seen it. Flinging the bottle against the wall in sudden anger, Genevieve strode back into living room, and paused.

The kindest thing, she knew, would be to put her mother out of the state she was currently in. But…

In the end, she'd taken her keys and locked the door behind her, moving on deeper into the city that had once been her home.

Her steps were aimless now; the need to see if her mother had survived having been the driving force that had led her back to Boston in the first place.

Now that that question had been answered, she wasn't sure where she would go or what she would do. She felt numb, and so it was with no small amount of bewilderment that she eventually found herself looking up at another residential building, one in a neighborhood far removed, financially speaking, from the one she had left behind.

It took her a few moments to realize that she was looking at the building where Richard had an apartment, for the times he hadn't felt like staying at his parents' place.

Anger, sudden, hot, and immediate, seared through her then, and she closed her eyes until the feeling passed.

She went inside, and this time there was no doorman to challenge her right to be there, no stuffily polite but firm employees to ask her to leave- after Richard had warned them to keep an eye out for her.

This building was as quiet as the other had been, but unlike her apartment complex, there were signs of a struggle here. She reached the landing of the floor Richard had once called his own, and stopped at the sight of the bodies collapsed on the other side of his door. They'd been the walking dead at one point in time, but now they lay still-silenced by several well-placed shots to the head. The apartment door was still closed, so maybe he'd-

Sucking in a breath she no longer needed, she cautiously went to the door and knocked, calling out quickly lest he think she was another ravenous corpse trying to gain entry. "Rich," she said hesitantly, wincing a bit at the hoarseness of her own voice, though given how long it had been since she'd had reason to speak, it was no wonder, "Are you there? It's me, Gen."

Silence greeted that query and the few she followed it with, and she tried the knob, finding it locked. Frustrated, she pushed at the door, and when her attempts to force it open yielded no results, she resorted to breaking open a fire kit she found down the fall, slamming it against the wood until the portal finally gave way beneath the violence of her efforts.

Richard was there, on the other side of the now broken door, wandering the room as mindlessly as her mother had been. Staring at him in mute horror, she saw the bandage on his arm, and knew what it meant. Like the newly reanimated man that had staggered out of the fabric store weeks before, he'd been bitten, and had escaped, only to die and revive as the wound poisoned and killed him.

"Damn you Richard…" she said softly, part of her wondering what she was damning him for as she looked at his glazed eyes and the gun that lay on the coffee table a few feet away from him.

For cheating on her? That had been the reason, after all, that she'd taken off on the camping trip that would have celebrated their two year anniversary. They'd been going to wait until the weather had warmed, but the memory of stepping into this very room and seeing him embracing and kissing a petite blonde girl she'd never seen before burning hot inside her, she'd stormed off to Ontario alone; ignoring the troubling forecasts of heavy snow and the rattling beginnings of bronchitis in her chest.

The last thing she remembered, before becoming conscious again at least, was sinking down onto her sleeping bag inside the tent; hearing the howl of the winter wind outside and trying to ignore the labored pace of her own breath. She'd leave the next day, she'd promised herself, she'd go into the nearest town and find a doctor; no sense in getting herself killed just because she was pissed off at a cheating boyfriend…

A laugh, hollow and bitter, broke the silence then, and she barely recognized it as her own. "In a way…" she said once her morbid mirth had died down, "I guess I should thank you. If you *hadn't* been dumb enough to bring your bimbo over and leave the door unlocked when you knew I was coming by…I guess there's a chance I'd be stuck in here with you."

He didn't even look at her as he paced the room, going from the window to the couch, and then back again.

She picked up the gun before she truly knew what she doing, feeling as cold and as hollow as her laugh had been as she lifted it, aimed, and fired; her shot blossoming in the center of his forehead and sending him crumpling to the floor, motionless as the dead should be.

A noise from the bedroom caught her attention then, and gun still in hand, she followed it.

The girl that stood beside the bed was as dainty and blonde as she remembered, but her pale blue eyes were mindless, and her throat had been torn out with blunt, but still deadly teeth.

Sickness that was more emotional than physical swept through her then, and she closed her eyes at the realization of what had happened. The door had been locked, Richard had been untouched except for the bandage on his arm, and the violence her…her replacement, had suffered, could only have had one cause.

In some petty, bitter corner of her mind, Genevieve debated leaving her there, as she had her mother, but for an entirely different motivation. This had been the woman Richard had really wanted; this delicate, golden-haired piece of perfection. How ironic then, would it be to leave her forever like this, that same beauty ruined by the gaping, jagged hole in her throat. She started to turn away, and then she saw what the undead girl was doing.

As mindless as any other revenant she had seen, the young blonde was nevertheless engaging in the endless repetition of the last thing she had been doing while conscious thought had still been hers. She clutched a blanket in her bloodless hands, looking confused as she attempted to drape it over the man who no longer lay there, suffering and feverish from the bite that would eventually claim his life.

Genevieve saw the chair that been dragged to the same side of the bed the other woman was standing on, and she grit her teeth; at war with herself, but only for a moment.

"He betrayed us both." She said quietly, before firing the gun a second time; this time out of pity.

She went back into the living room, sinking down on the couch and opening the ammunition chamber. There had been three bullets left, and now only one remained.

She pressed the barrel against her pale, cold temple, slid her finger around the trigger, and closed her eyes. She hadn't gone anywhere when death had taken her the first time, but maybe this time she would. Whatever lay on the other side, surely it had to be better than this.

But still…

She dropped the gun to the floor and opened her eyes, considering. All the walking dead she had seen thus far had been mindless, empty husks. But she wasn't. And if she was different, surely, out of the millions walking the earth, there might be more…there had to be more like her.

One thing was for sure, Genevieve was going to find out.