Till Death Do Us Part...Again

         Gail could feel the stares boring holes at the back of her skull, but she could care less. She had to hurry before –

         “Heh…having another barbeque, Mrs. B?” came the cheeky commentary from Brad, her insufferable student from Class 2.

         His smirk – perhaps he thought he was being seductive – was followed by the slight nod toward the growing pile of packaged fresh meats she was stacking by the cash register.

         “Must be one heck of a party, eh?”

         She ignored him – as well as the other whispered commentary from the customers queued behind her. Digging into her purse, she pretended to struggle to find her wallet as the consistent chiming of the packages being rung up were only a reminder of how much time she was wasting here.

         If she didn’t hurry –

         “Aaaand the total comes to…”

         She winced at the price, but scanned her card all the same. Snatching the receipt from the grinning Brad, she hastily stacked the ten paper bags full of her shopping into the cart much to the chagrin of the store helper, whose job was to do it anyway.

         “Do you want me to take them to the car for you-?”

         She was already out the automatic doors before he could finish his rehearsed words, and soon zooming down the highway hoping she didn’t attract any cops with how fast she was going.

         Never was she more grateful for having a private garage in a neighbourhood full of serene white-washed homes with sparkling blue pools and hidden secrets. She absently smiled at dear Mr. Osborne, who was mowing his lawn, but raised an arm in greeting before said arm suddenly plopped to the ground.

         “Son-of-a-bitch,” she’d hear him say as he bent to pick it up; now struggling to attach it back into place. “I thought I had this darn thing fixed-”

         She heard nothing more as the garage door closed behind her and she was in blissful darkness, but only briefly. The automatic lights came on, and she could already hear the banging of impatience behind the closed door leading to the kitchen.

         Goddamn it, she’d think with a low growl. I’m back you insatiable bastard.

         She nearly lost her footing as she climbed the short flight of steps and into her home; the bags forming a barricade before her as she sought to carry as much as possible. She would barely step into the kitchen, when something flew into her view and grabbed about half of them.

         With a sigh, she dumped the rest of the bags to the floor, watching as her husband tore open the packages and began gnawing on the thick slabs of beef, pig entrails, oxtails, and whatever other meaty item she’d managed to grab.

         “The rest are in the car,” she stated wearily as she kicked off her shoes and headed for the mini-bar where she helped herself to a bottle of white wine and drank straight from it. She flopped onto the sofa and flipped on the television, her teeth chattering from the cold – for the house had to remain at a certain temperature these days or the smell…urgh.

         “And in today’s news, doctors at Mount Mhysa hospital are astounded at how well their experiments are going with their latest batch of The Unceased. Here’s Doctor Grey at a press conference given earlier today.”

         “We are making great strides in dealing with the evolution of these patients. We will no longer consider them as ‘The Rotters’ as it seems such a barbaric term compared to the progress most have made in such a short time. So, we have decided to use the term ‘Unceased’ as most of you know by now. We say that because it appears they are simply re-learning how to become human again – if you will. They now seem to be exhibiting signs of their previous state before the attack of the deadly RHX virus. Why just yesterday, one of them began playing the Etudes by Chopin, after hearing it only once! He had never touched the piano before his first death, and to be able to play it flawlessly in his Unceased state…simply astounding.”

         “Ga-Gail?”

         She looked away from the television to observe the blood-stained and contrite man standing at the threshold of the living room. He was ‘back-to-normal’, if you could ignore the vomit-green pallor of his skin, the smear of guts and meat still attached to his face and hands, the yellowed teeth, and unkempt hair that just couldn’t be combed right when he got ‘in-that-state’.

         “Welcome back, honey,” Gail replied with a smile. “Want me to help you with your shower?”

         Jonathan Bailey, who just turned 54 about three months ago, before succumbing to a simple cough, which turned out to be the blasted RHX virus, sighed and eyed his messy attire. When he was human, this would be considered appalling. He was the finest professor at Deerhorn University, a no-nonsense academic prone to giving long lectures on Quantum Physics and boring the pants off those who were not intellectually-inclined as he was.

         He loved his wife, Gail, dearly and had done so for over thirty years. It still amazed him that she – a stunning redhead with eyes of brilliant emerald to match her intellect - had even fallen for a certified geek like him. She taught Mathematics at the local high school, and their courtship had all but involved two penned letters of hopeless romantic wishes, a date at a local restaurant, and marriage about a year later.

         Neither had talked about having children. Thank goodness.

         “I’ll be all right,” he replied with just a hint of shame as he eyed the mess he’d left behind in the kitchen. “I’ll clean up when I am done, honey.”

         She nodded in understanding and turned back to the television, leaving him to shuffle upstairs to gather himself.

         He hated to look at himself in the mirror; knowing what the disease had done to him, and even the act of washing himself seemed like a chore. He focused instead on the plops of meat and the fascinating swirl of blood mingled with soap suds as memories of when the madness began came rushing back.

         It really had started out as a simple cough and he had assumed it was just due to the cold weather. It wasn’t unusual. It would pass.

         But it didn’t.

         When the droplets of blood began to show up in his phlegm, the panic set in.

         The doctor surmised it was pneumonia and put him on the usual antibiotics, and for a while there seemed to be some sort of progress. He didn’t feel so fatigued and the colour was back in his cheeks. He could sit outdoors for a while without feeling faint, until he did do so…and never awakened.

         Gail would return from work to see him slumped on the patio later that evening; his body cold as ice and in the throes of rigor mortis.

         Surprisingly, she had not panicked as much as she should have. In fact, if anyone had dared ask, she’d confess that she’d probably felt the calmest in her life. She had chosen to sit beside his ‘dead’ body to wait for the miracle.

         She would tell him of the stories that had been floating around the workplace and in the dark corners of the internet; stories of people who had ‘died’ but came back to life after a few hours. She would have laughed it off if she hadn’t seen it in person. It was her best friend’s granddaughter who had contacted the virus, and plans had already been set in place for a funeral, only to be cancelled as the little girl was once again running around the house with even more energy than before. If you could ignore the weird skin pallor and her newest ability to speak five different languages at just six-years-old.

         So, Gail had waited, and it was sometime after midnight, when he began to show signs of reanimation.

         “You couldn’t recognize me at first,” she’d tell him, “And you smelled something awful. Well, you did shit your pants, but that’s a natural thing anyway. I was sure you were going to try to eat me, because all the books and movies say that, but surprisingly you were just looking around like you didn’t know where you were. I’m guessing God took one look at you and kicked you right back to earth. Anyway, I cleaned you up, dressed you in your clothes, put you in bed, and you were snoring away in a minute. But the next day…”

         The next day, she had found him in the middle of the kitchen, with the freezer wide open and all the frozen meats gone. There were pots and pans out, and she assumed he had tried to cook them, but gave up when the hunger pangs were too much. He still wasn’t speaking, except to make odd sounds and gestures as to what he wanted.

         It would be the first of many stops to different stores to satisfy his demands, and after a good meal, the difference was quite astonishing. If she could ignore the lingering stench of decay, the pallor of his skin, and teeth that was never going to be white again, she could believe it was her dear old Jonathan.

         However, some ground rules had to be set; the temperature in the house was always to be cold. Depending on how much meat he managed to consume, his normal state could last as long as three days before returning to being a Rotter (and goodness, he could be the grumpiest Rotter she’d ever seen). He, so far, only had a hunger for meat and not of the human kind, and he was more than content to slurp on the blood left on the packages. He no longer had any desire for normal fluids like water or his favourite alcoholic beverages. Or maybe those would return in due time, if those scientists could be believed.

         He was, soon, quick to regain his speech patterns and mannerisms, which had him wondering if it would be all right to return to the University. As far as he knew, Gail had simply told them he was still recovering from the illness and would require a sabbatical.

         However, if he was not allowed to return (for one had to be realistic in such matters), his only other option was to volunteer himself as a test subject for the doctors at Mount Mhysa -

         “Absolutely not!”

         He shivered as he recalled Gail’s vehement response to that suggestion and the tears of fear that had filled her eyes.

         Ah, dearest Gail. What would I ever do without you?

         Once suitably cleaned and dressed in his comfortable clothes, he would find her curled up on the sofa fast asleep. Feeling his heart stir with emotion at how sweet she looked; he was careful to sit beside her and pull her into his arms; aware that his body was still quite fragile all things considered. Why just look at dear Mr. Osborne next door. He could barely keep his body in one piece, and Jonathan was concerned that in due time his would begin to fall apart as well.

         However, there was hope.

         The rest of the world was now more aware of people like him, and perhaps, in due time a new vaccine would be created to keep them as human-like as possible until their second and, hopefully, final death.

         Until then, he was grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with the woman he loved. He smiled at the brochure still peeking from beneath the coffee table book, and wondered if it wasn’t too late to book a flight for that much-needed vacation.

         He’d heard Reykjavik was beautiful this time of year…







----------------------------

Word Count: 1974
Written for: "The Writing Dead" 
Prompt: Nature never stops evolving, so why should zombies?
Do they glow in the dark? Sing to attract prey? Herd humans like cattle? Or maybe they’ve evolved an insatiable hunger for something bizarre—like socks, selfies, or dad jokes. From climate-specific adaptations to outright ridiculous traits, your new zombies should defy convention, break the mold, and maybe even apply for a job at Walmart.
If they’ve already got brains, it’s only fair to let the zombies use them.