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Mr. Faller scratched the growing, gray stubble on his aging chin. He perused the resume of the ancient, rotting applicant before him. Leaning back in his plush leather chair, he coughed slightly, the effect of one too many cigarettes. "Seventeen years of graveyard experience, eh? Not everyone likes the late shift." Mr. Faller pointed to a line halfway down the paper, "It says here you won¹t be needing any breaks?"
The applicant shifted and his head fell to his chest, releasing a cloud of dust into the otherwise non-nauseating air from the back of his neck. "Gheernaar..." he gurgled. His scalp slipped slightly off the top of his skull.
"I like the enthusiasm. Can you start tonight?"
"Arrggghhh," nodded the corpse vaguely.
"Wonderful. What about that smell?" Mr. Faller studied his applicant carefully. After several moments of silence, Mr. Faller shrugged. "You¹re right, Larry on forklift doesn¹t exactly emanate potpourri either. Well, I guess you¹re hired." Mr. Faller stood up and reached out to shake the applicant¹s hand. The undead man attempted to return the gesture, but lost his balance and collapsed to the ground.
Mr. Faller blinked a few times and returned to his paperwork. The body on the opposite side of his desk twitched uncontrollably before going still.
* * *
The undead don¹t need sustenance. The undead don¹t need repose. Sure, the decomposition of their flesh and their putrid smell are negative aspects of their existence; but every employer in town found the first two traits appealing enough to overlook the decay of their living tissue. This is why the undead overran the job market in Pineville.
A living corpse stumbling casually along the sidewalk would startle most folks. Horror movies imply that the undead enjoy eating human brains, meandering and groaning uncontrollably. These are just terrible stereotypes. Not all of the undead are the same. Most are relatively harmless. So although you might assume that people would flee upon the sight of the undead, nobody in Pineville did. Maybe they were slightly more open- minded than the people in your run of the mill backwoods town. Either way, the upswing in the undead population was a gradual process. Nobody paid much heed.
It was a matter of corporate deregulation. Those in power allowed companies to dump waste materials wherever they needed to turn a larger profit. From this profit, the companies could then in turn give more money to those in power, making everyone involved much happier. The following year, a top-secret nuclear concern disguised as a small family-run company called "Bouquets and Baskets" began releasing its waste into the nearby Mosquito Creek. When an amazing array of bright foliage sprang up, the people in Pineville were ecstatic. After all, everyone loves plants, especially flowering ones; and plutonium-rich daisies sure look beautiful pulsing and glowing in the moonlight.
After first affecting only the banks of the creek, the nuclear waste trickled its way downstream into the low-level Mosquito Creek Cemetery. Millimeter by millimeter the tainted water rose above the moss and weeds amongst the graves. It soon completely saturated the graveyard. Visitors depositing flowers by the tombstones found themselves ankle deep in muck.
"Things change," the people said. And life went on. Well, it didn¹t just go on, it grew even. More lives were formed in the ground as skeletons and corpses rose their way to the surface of the bog. They soon began blinking, those with eyelids left anyway, and working their way to their feet.
"Gyarrgh!" commented one of the undead, just before its left arm tore loose and fell to the ground.
"Nyaaarn!" agreed another, enjoying his newfound freedom.
Within twenty-four hours, these beings wandered their way slowly into the town, one stumbling step at a time. Those without legs crawled. And with nothing better to do, these seemingly useless zombies found their way into the workforce.
Part-time human employees caught eating or yawning were soon let go, due to these tremendous flaws of the living. Everything ran extremely smoothly in town. But this invasion of sorts, which seemed so harmless at first, began upsetting the sleeping, eating, breathing, heart-pumping, blood-flowing, moving at a normal pace, not creepy, clear-speaking, normal folks.
"Hell," exclaimed one man, "they aren¹t even alive, so obviously they don¹t need to make a living!" The town grumbled in agreement. Something had to be done.
* * *
Arnold worked at the local Burger Master. At nineteen, he had never lost an appendage to rotting decay, or spent more than fifteen minutes six feet below the earth¹s surface, unlike most of his new co-workers. He had established himself as a trustworthy employee. He was smart, quick to pick up new skills, and good with living people. That¹s why his boss didn¹t fire him with the rest of the living employees. So when the influx of undead came looking for work, Arnold was in charge of training them.
A lesion-faced undead man soon replaced the pimple-faced teenager that previously worked the cash register, although they shared the same apathetic look in their eye sockets. One rotting woman was assigned to keep an eye on the deep fryer. It took seven tries before the woman did not clumsily deep-fry her own hand, taking small bites of her deliciously greasy fingers each time. Luckily, patience was another trait that Arnold possessed. He showed the woman what to do over and over again, until she finally got it right, despite her missing fingers and the confused customer who received exactly twenty- eight French fries and one "prize" as the lawyers later deemed the mysterious fried finger in court.
But patience aside, Arnold just didn¹t see what made these new employees so spectacular. And their smell was horrific. He also missed the cute, living blonde who used to take orders. The new order-taker¹s mangled, silver locks were quite impressive for an eighteenth century frequenter, but there really wasn¹t a comparison. But it wasn¹t until an undead woman was promoted to general manager that he decided things needed to change.
Arnold decided on a plan of action. It was so simple. All he needed to do was track down enough disgruntled, living workers, and they could band together to stop the growing, yet decomposing new workforce. "The people will be heard!" he proclaimed.
And thus the first of many undead picket lines began in the city of Pineville.
* * *
Picketing began around the largest of the undead-hiring corporations, such as the supermarket. Angry humans were waving signs in the air with such sayings as: "Livings for the Living!" "Decay is not O.K.!" and "Go Back to Hell You Spawns of Satan!" Hate takes on many forms.
A new employee dragged its tattered feet across the ground, trying to get through to the front door. The picket line blocked his way. Now scabs have always been known as the worst kind of people. They put their own interests ahead of the workingman so that the evil corporation could continue making money while the little man stood out in the streets. It was never decided if the zombie workers could be called scabs, because their immune systems couldn¹t quite emulate the human healing process, and their wounds tended more towards the puss-oozing, fungi-spreading type.
"Phraaagh," sighed the employee, wanting to punch in on time. It continued its trek toward the building, slamming softly into the picket line, severing at the torso and collapsing onto the ground. It was quite a gruesome sight. So then and there, the first incident of worker violence was recorded into the history books at the Pineville Public Records Department.
* * *
Arnold, the young idea man, realized that picketing was not enough. He decided to take his plan to a new level. If employers wanted workers who didn¹t need lunch breaks and never got tired on the job, then that is precisely what the living would give them. They staged hunger strikes and drank enough coffee to stay up for days. It worked. This brought the breathing humans on par with the rotting undead. This made the breathing humans even preferable to the rotting undead, as there was less skin, hair, appendages and entrails to sweep up at the end of the day. Everything went back to normal.
This normality lasted only three days. Some zombies spent their time rotting in the unemployment office, which was surprisingly similar to the actions of living people who used to frequent the office, while others returned to the graveyard marsh to soak and rot more. But the fact is that living humans do need sleep and sustenance, so the entire work force died, plain and simple Every last person dropped dead, letting the undead go back to work.
By this time, "Bouquets and Baskets" had let enough waste dump into the community that the water supply and most of the cattle raised in the area had been severely poisoned with radiation. From there it then spread to the general populace. So the bodies of the recently living rose from the ground after a day or two and joined the undead workforce. This happened to everyone except a man named Jeff. Jeff miraculously stayed alive and tried to carry about his business in this somewhat different new world. But unfortunately Jeff soon had his brains eaten by a particularly stereotypical undead woman and got a job washing dishes in a local restaurant.
The economic wheel continues turning.
{back}
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