Two-hundred and forty-six days alive. My high school girlfriend would have been proud. The Zombie Park trade was booming. People coveted what they feared, and I was in the business of eliciting thrills. I had flunked my high school aptitude test—but working the parks—I excelled at it.

We trained the lifeless to do what we could not be bothered; picking up trash on a leash monitored by a cattle-prod, clearing rat infestations with more speed and precision than rent-o-kill. Our signature act was to play catch for spectators. The fresher the slaughter, the easier it was to train the New Converts, and it was all down to muscle memory.

If you threw a ball nine times out of ten, they would snatch it. They were big dogs, not unlike Dobermans.

We fed them to each other. No punter preferred to see protruding organs and ribs through emaciated skin. The community desired the grotesque in manageable bite-size portions so not to detract them from their gift store merchandise.

We hoped we were demystifying a nightmare.

I walked the perimeter. The Gnashers were beyond decomposed for public display. They staggered in a circle, on occasion lurching and ripping a chunk out of the other. It was a better deal than monitoring the Raptor pen, which housed the adolescent and unpredictable. We satisfied them at arms' length with a pitchfork or dropped rotting flesh straight from the scaffolded skywalk above.

"We've taken shipment from Louisiana," Etienne announced, his eyes narrowed whilst flicking through the pages of the manifest. "We've got three Gnashers, one New Convert, seven Raptors, and a Statue."

"Tell Denlay our Raptor enclosure has no vacancies. Anyway, Long Island promised to receive the next batch."

"Shit." He winced, glancing at the paperwork in his hand. "Denlay is the New Convert. According to the manifest, there was an incident on the long haul. New driver's name is Jimmy."

"Denlay was a good man; I don't wanna look at his face. Return him with an Article 54 notice—Convert Known to Keeper."

Etienne disappeared into the office.

Article 54 kept laborers happy. We didn't personalize what we did or whom we did it to. Knowing a New Convert led to accidents and threatened the safety of paying patrons who saw our spectacle.

Etienne approached. "Just got off the long wave. Long island says they'll take them, but only if we deliver."

I sighed. "Add them to the next manifest."

"But it's not due to leave for another month?"

He was right. We had switched to a once a month schedule. However, the laws were strict; too many inmates and we risked our ratio of shepherds to flock, and the upper hand rules the roost.

"Fine, we'll go, let's clear the other consignment first. Maybe we could raid Costco on the way? They sold these peanut butter cookies..." For a dollar ninety-nine in old money, they were addictive and now had a street value.

Etienne chuckled. "I say we can do that."

He loosened the muscles in his neck before picking up his cattle-prod. The dead didn't feel pain, but their nervous system still operated to avoid it. It made a convenient method to shepherd them around.

We suited up; jackets insulated with newspaper and mattress stuffing, held together with duct tape. Etienne slid the bolt lock. The knocking from inside fell silent and we swung the door open.

They'd shackled the group to seats, except for one that slumped at the back.

"Spotted the Statue." Etienne boarded the truck and nudged it with his boot. "Never fed, early rigor mortis. Zap it and stimulate the tendons—see if we can get it moving."

I climbed in beside him and jolted it with 3.5 milliamps. We watched it contort on autopilot. A chunk was missing from her shoulder, but the wound looked old, healed.

"Good girl, come this way." The Statue rose to her feet, slamming into the wall. She stooped and swayed to face me.

My heart stopped beating. I would have known that shade of strawberry blonde anywhere. Etienne watched me forcibly swallow.

"Miles, are you okay?"

I would never be okay again.

"Article 54 this one too." My words lodged around a lump in my throat. "Abby was as good as dead when I left her."

"You are sure she was dead? Was she infected first?"

I believed she was. What was she doing a world away from the suburb we grew up in?

"Don't beat yourself up, man." Etienne placed a padded baseball mitt on my arm.

Her head rolled and then rocked up. There wasn't an ounce of recollection in her eyes for who I had been to her, but the enigma of muscle memory in every sense of the word was retained—even in the brain. Abby recognized her name. I wondered how long it had been since she had last heard it spoken.

She blinked in confusion and then stretched her mouth wide, exercising the need to feed. I rubbed the spot on my chest where my lungs constricted. Not wanting to meet her eyes, I backed up and signaled for Etienne to take over.

That night her last words were the lullabies that sang me into a fitful sleep. To picture her in quarantine alone broke me in ways this apocalypse hadn't yet been able to.

Before I could reason with myself, I dipped out of my motorhome under the glare of the floodlights and stars. The trailers were all in proximity to one another but sprawled haphazardly linked by narrow dirt paths worn in the grass. I navigated the route until I found the quarantine pen. My fingers looped around the chain-link fence and scanned heads for hers but drew a blank.

Etienne came to stand beside me. "Thought I'd find you here. You do know this idea sucks, right?"

I nodded. "Right. Second worst idea I ever had."

Etienne's eyebrows narrowed and eyes soul-searched mine for a long beat. "She's not here; Billy's fed and selected her for induction."

My eyes shut, battling two inconvenient truths; either she was a fresh kill and suitable for shepherding, or she wasn't a New Convert. One option meant I'd left her for dead, but she had survived. The other was to imagine her harvested to feed the others. Neither truth sat well for the girl I once professed to love.

"To say goodbye, you'll need to go now."

The workshop sat behind the quarantine pen. It was a shed with no windows or natural light. Billy was nocturnal, a force of habit for most nowadays. I rapped once on the door and then pushed it ajar.

He wore cargo pants and a shirt that didn't quite cover his protruding gut. He grinned around a lit cigarette that hung out of rough, chapped lips. "Etienne warned me you might come, kid."

Billy had secured Abby to a dining table with strategically placed event recorders stuck to her skin. I'd observed this procedure only once before. When the muscles were stimulated, traction was monitored.

"Induction takes five-seconds. That's how often the artificial ping checks muscle response. Wait over there." Billy pointed to a garden chair in the corner.

Billy sucked in a deep drag on his cigarette. The smoke plumed out in a funnel dissipating into the air. "Ten seconds..."

He took aim with a police issued taser.

My foot tapped in trepidation for the tiniest flicker of her fingertips that had once gripped mine tightly.

Billy tasered my girlfriend four unforgivable times in different areas. Abby contorted as if possessed. A rusted ICU monitor rigged to a car battery bleeped and then bleeped again.

"What does that mean?"

"Ping received." He looked me in the eye for the first time since I came in. "This one's a New Convert, sorry, kid."

A lump formed in my throat, stopping me from swallowing. I'd abandoned Abby, somehow, she had survived the bite I was sure had killed. "This one's an Article 54; stick her on the truck for Long Island tomorrow."

I bowed my head, concealing the tear that rolled down my nose.

By sunrise the next day, we were on the move. Red and yellow rock formations flanked the road ahead of us in the shapes of obelisks. The jagged ridgeline of the mountains separated the cloud-streaked sky from the earth. Vultures picked apart a corpse that still crawled on all fours with a backpack strapped to it.

With no working radio, Etienne would serenade us on route, knowing my favorite tunes by heart. He wound down the only window, welcoming a breeze to roll through, and hummed a song from the past.

I held my hand up. "Anything but that one." The song I danced to at homecoming was a hard limit. We passed the point of questioning one another. Each knew if a raw nerve was struck, which is why it pissed me beyond words when he carried on.

My fist slammed on the dashboard. "I said stop humming."

"Jeez, I did already!"

My head whipped around. We'd battened timber and plywood off cuts to form a partition behind us. My eyes fixed on an aperture left as a peephole.

Abby hummed our song from the back.

"Don't let your mind wander. It's muscle memory, nothing more. It's involuntary," Etienne said.

"Stop the bus." My hand reached for the steering wheel.

"Have you seen something?" Etienne grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and patted with the other for binoculars.

"I want to let her out..."

Etienne blinked and then blinked again. "We can't. Tell me you know that. She's no free-range chicken."

"Are you forgetting what I did for you? Not once have I told a soul."

Etienne fell silent. A few beats later, we slowed to a stop as the engine choked.

"I hope you know what you're doing." Etienne pulled a lever and the concertina doors unfolded.

I exited the bus and around to the emergency exit. Heat rose from the already sun-baked asphalt. There was a sudden cry from a different type of vulture in the distance—I didn't have long.

I proceeded with caution around the Raptors. Their eyes glowed feral as their bodies trembled at my proximity. I grimaced, covering my mouth with my sleeve. The pungent reek of human decay was recognizable in an instant. What always surprised me was the sickly-sweet side note not dissimilar to fermenting roadkill and cheap perfume. The stench was horrendous and one reason the Zombie Parks were open air with any crowd suppressed fifty feet away behind a makeshift barrier.

When I reached Abby, her limbs rattled until she stilled, inhaling the air. There was a crumpled note peeking out of her pocket. I pushed her back with one hand, snatching the note with my other.

'I don't know if you'll find this. I know what you did, and I've long asked why, until I understood and was forced to do it too. You can't control the instinct to survive. Never try.'

Teased, beaten, broken and senior year had only just started. Abby shared the same first week experience and was just about ready to give up and try homeschooling when the first Raptor we'd ever seen sprinted out of a bush and ripped a chunk out of her shoulder. It was Dougie Day, the resident yearbook photographer. I always loathed Dougie, now I had reason. When she stopped struggling, I was the only one left screaming.

I ran like hell that day. But man, what was I supposed to do? Like the un-dead, we became single-minded organisms with an empathy erosion.

The asymptomatic harbored the virus. With a reproductive rate of five, an incubation period of flu, and viral droplets that withstood bleach—the world was a wasteland in less than three months. The only problem? You were oblivious as to who was a pitcher or a catcher in this new ball game. The dead were a by-product.

The idea of incarcerating her to a Zombie Park to play ball was torturous. "I'm sorry, Abby," I said in hushed words just between us. "I never should have ran and abandoned you. I should have stayed—saved you from this."

I called out to Etienne. "I'm letting her out. Amend the manifest."

I prodded her forward with a zap of electrical current. Once free of the bus, I left her to walk among the junipers and wilted milkweed wildflowers.

As soon as my back turned, she bolted. The same as I had done to her. But she sprinted in a different direction. What I had coming next, I probably deserved.

|The End|

Wildflower

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