Rising: Parables From The Apocalypse - Dystopian Fiction Read Free Page A

wasn’t too crowded considering it was the weekend and tourist season.  It sure is nice to just get away from all the crap around that place.  I really needed this.  I remember skipping high school classes and hanging out here with friends when the weather was good.  Only got caught a few times too. 
     
    Leekasha kicked off her shoes and took in the view.  Cabanas and umbrellas dotted the beach, and the usual smell of food vendors on the boardwalk filled the air.  The sea breeze blew most of the smell of the food vendors’ carts in the other direction, but occasionally she’d get the smell of spicy sausages, mustard and soft pretzels.  It’s surprising how normal all this seems.  Christa and that freak Patzy were right.  I do need to get out in the real world more often.  It’s not so bad. 
     
    Then the screams hit her.  Voices from the not so distant past.  Two zombie garbage collectors driving a golf cart with dune buggy wheels down the beach.  Nobody paid much attention to them, except the two teenage boys that threw their empty soda containers at their cart as they drove by.  The cans bounced off and into the sand.  The garbage collectors stopped, picked up their cans and drove away.  The screaming subsided in Leekasha’s brain, but no one else seemed to even notice their arrival or departure.  Even the teenage boys seemed indifferent to the zombies.
     
    Leekasha remembered the indifference, and worse.  She remembered the times she had worked incinerating zombie corpses on Captain Willie’s old shrimp boat.  Indifference would have been a relief on that boat.  Instead she endured constant beatings and abuse simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  She remembered one time he pushed her from the deck into the hold, cracking her skull as she hit.  That physical scar had long since healed, but the memory hadn’t. As she walked by the two teenage boys, she saw them showing off by rough housing in front of a few girls.  It didn’t take much effort on her part as she planted the notion in their heads that they were standing in front of a urinal and needed to relieve themselves.  The look of laughter on the girls’ faces, and the embarrassment on the boys’ as urine ran down their legs evened the score enough for Leekasha.
     
    She spent the next few hours walking the beach and enjoying the views. Every once in a while she encouraged a beachgoer to give up their cabana for a few minutes so Leekasha could get out of the sun and have a nap.  Some even left sandwiches and drinks for her as they waited for her to finish.  The last one even left a mobile tablet for her to use.  How nice of them, she thought.  Scrolling through the news feeds brought the usual stories.  Some and such celebrity was in trouble for sleeping with another celebrity they weren’t married to.  One story caught her eye about an accident at a chemical plant a few towns away.  The video showed the building burning in the background, with some news reporter going on about what caused the explosion and how lucky they were that there were no casualties caused by the accident.  A related story, but with a smaller headline, indicated nearby residents were concerned about the thirty-five or so zombies that were incinerated in the fire.  The residents were concerned that the air would now be contaminated, and were insisting that the factory grounds be sterilized by land reclamation crews.  Another side story cited concerns over fear of environmental damage from zombie corpses not disposed of according to official government standards. 
     
    What the hell?  Zombies don’t count as casualties, and now all of a sudden our corpses are considered an environmental hazard?  I suppose that shouldn’t come as too much of a shock considering my previous occupation.  That’s unbelievable.  It’s one thing to stick all the zombies with the jobs nobody wants, but to treat them no different than chemical waste