The Thinking Undead

The dawn was still. The crickets and fireflies had lowered the curtain on their nocturnal performance. The birds had yet to warm up their voices and take to the stage. For Susie, it was the best time of the day. She watched the light grow in the distance. 

She thought of Hannah. “Time to get up!” Hannah would have said if she thought Susie was taking too much time to savour daybreak.

But Susie was already up and thinking. She had been up all night thinking. She had been up all night for the last three nights (she did not sleep anymore), thinking about almost everything.

And she was up a tree. She was hanging from her favourite oak in the woodland reserve near their home. Hanging from her neck. 

Why can I still think?

The question returned to her mind. She had been pondering it not long after what she thought would be her very final decision. Yet, deciding to kick the log out from under her feet turned out not to be her very final decision after all. She was dead but she could think.

Wow! I can think!

She was dead but she was still conscious. She was dead but she was still herself.

Wow!

She could move too – slowly, clumsily – and make sounds – groans and farts – lots of farts in fact. She could move her limbs and digits, but with the level of mastery akin to a child trying to bring a puppet to life. Her body was deader than her mind; there was no doubt about that. Her deader jaw, lips, tongue, and larynx resulting in every word she spoke sounding like graagh. Her deader guts no doubt resulting in the continuous and ropeable flatulence. 

She sensed the world differently as well. All her senses were dull. Thank you, was the thought that proceeded her musing of what she considered a fortunate change. “Graaagh,” is how it came out. Before, the world was too noisy, too busy, too in her face. Her deader eyes, ears, skin, etcetera, filtered out the extremes of the stimuli around her. It brought her peace. Well, nearly peace. While the pain was nowhere near as intense, she felt a constant ache in her neck as it continued to stretch.

Problems in the aftermath of hanging oneself, like pains in the neck, were one of the very few things she had not thought about. There was not meant to be any problems. Of course, there could have been if she had not tied the rope well, but she had thought of that. After the hanging, she was meant to cease to exist. She was not meant to be able to think. 

Could they think too, the others?

Was another question she pondered from her rope. They could move. They wandered around, they chased the Survivors, they ate the Survivors. They groaned and farted and shat (What goes in, must come out). They no doubt had dull senses like her. When she was Survivor, she could hide from them by keeping still and quiet, nothing more. They showed no sign of pain as they shambled toward Survivors that filled them with bullets or cut them to pieces.

But could they think?

Susie was sure they could not think. After all, she had seen them fall for the most basic of traps. She had seen a whole horde walk into a big hole some Survivors had dug and later filled. She had seen them claw at unlocked doors, trip over low fences, and tumbled down steps. She had never seen them flee, regroup, or changed tactics when the Survivors had the upper hand. Susie had considered all she had seen and concluded that they could not think. She was one of a kind.

Could that be right? Could I be the only…

Her attention drifted to the external world. She gently swayed and the light twinkled before her. She wondered if the morning breeze was moving her and the leaves above. Then she felt pain, dull but familiar, in her left eye. She heard a loud caw and noticed a black object on the edge of her flickering field of view. 

Shit! A crow! It's pecking my eye!

Susie startled the bird with a lively “Graaaaagh!” and the flailing of her arms. The crow launched from her shoulder. Her left eye ached and delivered distorted images to her brain.

Damn it! I like dull senses, but I don’t –  

The crow returned. It had been thinking too, because it jumped on her head, levelled its beak with her left eye, and plucked it out in one quick motion. Then the crow and the eye were gone.

“Graaaaaaaagh”. 

Susie hated the flies. As soon as the day began to warm, the flies, in their hundreds, swarmed around her corpse. She told herself that it would be worse if she was alive, but then again, she would not attract so many of the horrible little creatures if she was alive. Their number had been increasing every day since her death. Even her dull senses struggled to block their aerobatics, their droning, and their many little feet crawling on her flesh. From when the air had warmed in the morning to when it had cooled in the early evening, the flies pestered Susie. Hence, during the day it was hard for her to think about anything other than flies. 

But thoughts of flies could lead to memories of summers past, and to precious moments with her best friend, Hannah.

High-spirited Hannah. The life of any party. Always on the go, always with something to say, always socialising. Always asking for what she wanted and always getting what she asked for. Nothing like me.

Everybody loved Hannah, but nobody as much as Susie. Hannah and Susie’s desire turned out to be mutual. Of course, it was Hannah who first whispered the words “I love you”, and it was Susie who was left speechless.

Susie often struggled with idea that someone like Hannah could love someone like her. She considered herself lifeless even before she had died. Once she had asked Hannah “Do you really love me?” and Hannah had simply said “Opposites attract”, smiled, and returned to what she was doing. Hannah did the same whenever she sensed Susie was having the same thought. “Opposites attract” became Hannah’s catchphrase. Before the dead became undead, she was using it several times a day, almost as many times as Susie had her doubts. 

Susie could not keep up with Hannah. She wanted to, she tried to, but she failed. Susie needed to stop, to rest, to be alone sometimes. As the years went by, she needed these things more and more. Susie changed; she burned out. Hannah did not change; she carried on as usual. When the world fell apart, the gulf between Susie and Hannah was greater than it had ever been. 

Hannah wanted to join the Survivors and fight. Susie did not know what to do. She had been thinking – thinking a lot, about the undead, the Survivors, and the future – but she needed more time to think. Hannah said that they did not have time, kissed Susie, and walked away. 

Susie waited for Hannah to come home. She watched for Hannah from the upstairs windows for days, but she saw only the undead wandering the neighbourhood. 

Later, Susie tried not to think about Hannah, which meant that she tried not to think at all. At first, she kept herself busy with meditation, crosswords, and books. Then, when her thoughts kept breaking through, she would pour a bag of rice on the ground and collecting the grains one at a time, counting them as she did, imagining the number in her head and nothing else. It was not long before she was pouring the bag of rice out immediately after picking up the last grain and starting again.  

When she slept, she dreamt of Hannah. She dreamt of the undead chasing Hannah, of the undead eating Hannah, of Hannah leaving her again. She began avoiding sleep to avoid the nightmares. 

Her food reserves ran low, and her morale and sanity ran lower. Three weeks after Hannah left, Susie allowed herself to think again, but there was only one thing on her mind. She focussed for a day on how to execute her plan and the next day she took a rope to the woodland reserve.

The flies loved Susie’s empty left eye socket. It was a new orifice for them to lay their eggs in and they thronged to it. With her right eye, she watched flies copulate on her nose. 

She tried to estimate how many maggots were nibbling on her corpse. She wondered how long it would take them to consume her body. She reckoned her brain (where she presumed her mind resided) was safe in her skull. She wondered what would happen if the maggots and crows left nothing more than her bones and brains.

I have never seen skeletal undead rattling about...

Something large stuck her corpse from behind and spun her to the right. The blow did not cause pain, but it forced the flies into the air. She spun back and the flies reclaimed their nesting sites. Then she was stuck again from behind by a similar-sized object that spun her to the left. Again, she was stuck and again she spun in the opposite direction to the blow. She was struck countless more times at an increasing rate, being spun this way and that. With only one eye, dull vision and the spinning, Susie could not see her assailants. She assumed that she was being attacked by a gang of Survivors. She was their Halloween piñata.

Better stand back when I split open because my treats are putrid guts and maggots!

Then the attack stopped. As her spinning slowed, Susie saw her attackers ahead of her shambling away. It was a horde of undead. Survivors had not attacked Susie with sticks. The members of the horde had simple bashed into her as they wandered to wherever they were wandering.

Mindless arseholes! She wanted to say, but “Graaagh!” was what came out. 

None of the undead turned around.

As she gradual unspun, Susie saw more undead flanking her. She guessed there were fifty of the damned things in all, moving in a rough v-formation through the woods. 

Thank God, I am stuck up here and not down there among them.  

She could not think of anything worse than being one of them. A member of the horde – always on the go, always groaning, always together. She considered herself lucky to be dangling from a tree, despite its problems.

I’d love to come to the party, but I’m going to hang here a while.

Then she saw Hannah. She was sure of it. Off to the right. She saw her twice during the last two spins in that direction. She tried to twist and jiggle her corpse in that direction but to no avail. She called her best friend’s name.

“Graagh! Graagh! Graa – ”.

A sudden and enormous bang followed a blinding flash and drowned out Susie’s groans. When her right eye could see again the scene before her had changed. Strewn blood and guts replaced the main body of the horde, among dirt mounds, shattered trees, fires, and smoke. Some undead (and the better half of some undead) were picking themselves up to shamble on. Survivors appeared from out of the smoke and gunned them back down again. When the Survivors dropped the last of the undead, they celebrated with hollers and hoots.

This must be Hannah’s Survivors, though Susie. That was her! I did see her!

“Graagh! Graagh! Graagh!” Susie called to Hannah again.

The Survivors noticed and walked towards the hanging and groaning corpse. Susie examined each in turn, searching for Hannah. They stopped right before her, looked up at her. Four Survivors were women. None of them was Hannah. A man drew a samurai sword from its sheath, held it high and swung it at Susie.

Susie dropped to the ground, free from the oak. Her head lay on its left side with her one eye up. 

Thoughts of what might happen next raced through her mind. She willed her arms to move, to gesticulate that she was the Thinking Undead; that she was conscience. But her arms and hands did not move. She looked down and found them not where she had expected them to be. A moment later, she realised the man had severed her head as opposed to the rope as she had first thought.

Oh.

The man lowered the tip of the sword to her one eye. She thought to call for Hannah again, but decided to look up at her favourite oak instead.

Goodbye.

But the sword never pierced her eye or her brain beyond. This time, the undead ambushed the Survivors. The Survivors had not realised that the horde was moving in a v-formation. They had not realised that their explosion and bullets had only destroyed a third of the horde. And they had not realised that, by approaching Susie, they had put themselves at the centre of the remaining horde. The flanking undead attacked. The Survivors did not survive. 

The Thinking Undead survived though. She was only a head now, but she had thought that that had always been the case. She was still conscious. She could still think.

Wow!

Susie had seen Hannah. And she saw her again. Hannah was not a Survivor anymore, she was undead like Susie, but also not like Susie. Hannah was one of the Unthinking Undead and part of the horde. Susie was sure that she had died some time ago - her flesh looked aged - and not during the battle of the woodland reserve.

Hannah took part in the massacre of the six men and four women Survivors. She came within a metre of Susie’s head. Again, Susie called to her friend, but Hannah did not respond, she did not even look down at the severed head by her feet. After a while, Susie stopped groaning and simply observed Hannah.

High-spirited Hannah.

Her best friend gorged herself on human flesh, sharing the experience with her new friends and groaning all the time. Her best friend was having the time of her death. Susie smiled.

You go, girl!

When Hannah and the horde moved on, Susie was alone again. There were so many corpses and parts of corpses in the woodland that the flies and crows were spoilt for choice. As a result, very few pestered Susie’s head. Susie had a good view of her favourite oak and, if she looked to the side, she saw the sky. Her external world was peaceful, and her internal world was full of memories and thoughts.