Friday 19 August 2011

The Judas Caste

"'Scuse me, buddy, but can you spare a leg?"
I barely glanced down, I was leaving the station and the entrance hall always had one or two zombies begging there now. The police tended to leave them alone, and though the station staff were under orders to move them on, most of them didn't like going near the zombies so they could stay and panhandle as much as they liked.
"I'm using both of mine," I said in a clear voice. The zombies didn't much seem to like having attention drawn to them, so the best way to refuse was to do so loudly so everyone could hear.
"Timeshare, then?"
That halted me, it was almost a joke. And zombies had no sense of humour at all; one of the things death took permanently was an ability to see the funny side of things. I looked down.
The zombie was a woman, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a flat cap in front of her containing a handful of coins, some bottle tops and a health-care token. One of her legs ended just above the knee, and I could see the end of the bone, with scraps of sinew and tendon still clinging to it. It looked a little chewed, which could be rats, or could be other zombies. Above that she was wearing a blouse that looked new. Her face stopped my breath though. It was Tasha.
"Hi Rube," she said when our eyes made contact. "You're blocking the way."
I shuffled to the side, and held out a hand to help her up. She nearly pulled me over – I'd heard that zombies were strong, but this was the first time I'd ever touched one – and leant on me so that her short-leg was supported.
"Where are you going to take me, Rube?" There was a hint of laughter in her voice.
"There's a café," I said. "Just outside. They'll let you sit at the table so long as I'm ordering."
"How blesséd I am," she said, but left at that until we were sat down and I had two cups of coffee in front of me, the waitress insisting that everyone who had a seat should have a drink.
"What happened, Tash?" I said, staring into the black depths of my Americano. "Last time I saw you you were still dancing."
"I died," said Tasha, staring at me. I suddenly realised that zombies don't blink. "We were doing West Side Story up at the Cotillion and one of the props came lose and hit me."
"What?"
"Yeah, the prop manager was drunk that morning, didn't check all the ties properly. Just my bad luck it was the wrecking ball. Bad for the theatre too, took out a supporting wall and collapsed the east side of the upper circle."
"How did you...." I tailed off, not knowing how to ask the question.
"Become a zombie?"
I nodded.
"I was lucky, the ball hit me and knocked me over instead of pasting me up against the wall, the unlucky bit was being run over by the ambulance when it arrived.
"The Judas Caste?"
She nodded. "Yeah. They were only too thrilled to conceal the evidence of their crime and hand me over to the resurrectionists. Three days on a cross, a tattoo that looks suspiciously like a barcode, and now a lifetime of spite and hatred from the living."
"Don't the resurrectionists like you?"
"Not in ways you'd like to hear about," she said.
"So why are you...." Still here, I wanted to say, but it seemed too cruel.
"Still here? Because I have a bill to pay for my return to this life, and if I kill myself, they'll wake me up again and add the new bill to the old."
"How do you pay the bill?"
"We're back to those things you don't want to hear about," she said. "But, there might be a way out of this, if you could do a thing or two for me?"
I raised an eyebrow and discovered that zombies don't have very good eyesight.
"Well? Will you help me?"
"What do I have to do?" I asked.
"First of all, meet me in the Popham graveyard at midnight tonight."

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