The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology Read Free Page A

there, at the apartment. I opened the front door and walked in, smelled the weird chemical smell that reanimates emitted, and the feeling washed over me that I had no business being there. My name was on the lease, but I felt like an intruder.
     
    It was a crappy apartment on the cusp of the very wrong side of town, cheap, but not too dangerous. The place was a one bedroom - more space than Maisie needed, since she supposedly didn’t need any space at all. She wasn’t supposed to, but I always wondered. Sometimes when I came to check on her, the chairs around the cheap kitchen table would look out of place. I always pushed my chairs in, but these were pulled out at odd angles or even halfway across the floor, as though advertising that they’d been moved. I supposed there was nothing wrong with her taking a seat or moving things around if that was what she wanted to do, but she wasn’t supposed to want to do it. That’s what bothered me.
     
    When I went in that day, she was standing precisely where I last left her, her back to the far wall of the living area, her face to the door, light from the slightly parted curtains streaming over her. I watched the dust motes dance around her eyes, visible through the mask, wide and doll like and unblinking.
     
    Maisie was a black-market reanimate, but she wore the green-and-white uniform of a licensed General Reanimation unit, and of course she wore that matching green-and-white mask, which made her look, to my eyes, like a Mexican wrestler. Plenty of people, even people who liked having reanimates around, found the mask a bit disconcerting, but they all admitted it was better than the alternative. No one wants to check into a hotel and discover that the reanimate bellboy is one’s own dead relative. No one wants to go to a cocktail party and see a dead spouse offering a tray of shrimp pâté on ciabatta.
     
    I hated the uniform - slick and stain resistant, made of some sort of soft plastic. It was oversized and baggy, making it almost impossible to tell that Maisie was female. I hated the full- face mask, but I had her wear it in case there was a fire or the building manager had to send in a repairman to fix something or even if there was a break-in. I didn’t want anyone knowing I owned an illegal reanimate. I didn’t need that kind of trouble.
     
    I stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind me. ‘Hello, Maisie. You may take off the mask if you like.’
     
    She remained motionless, as still as a mannequin.
     
    ‘Maisie, please take off the mask.’
     
    With her left hand, she reached up and pulled it off but held on to it. I hadn’t told her to put it anywhere, and so letting it go would not occur to her dead brain. Underneath the mask, I saw her face, pale and puffy, hanging loose from her skull, but strangely still pretty. She had long, flowing curls of reddish blonde hair, her pale blue eyes - I’m sure very arresting in life - dull and cloudy in un-death.
     
    I came to check in on Maisie maybe once a week. I should not have to, of course. I ought to have been able to leave her alone for months, but I knew it was a good idea for reanimates to get some exercise lest they gum up. That was part of it. The other part was that I wanted to be sure she wasn’t up to no good. Renanimates weren’t supposed to have it in them to be up to no good, but if she hadn’t been Maisie, had not acted like herself, she wouldn’t be in the apartment to begin with.
     
    ‘How have you been, Maisie?’
     
    Of course there was no response. What was left of her brain couldn’t process so abstract a question. That’s what Ryan said, and he seemed to think he knew what he was talking about.
     
    ‘Maisie, get me a beer from the refrigerator.’
     
    I could get my own beer, of course, but I needed to find excuses to make her move. I had to specify one from the refrigerator because otherwise she might get me a warm one from the pantry or she might end up looking for a