No Tears for the Dead

Margaret Fisher

No one knew what had set things in motion, they knew only what the ultimate result of

that unknown trigger had been; to the world and the people who had once inhabited it. She'd

been far from television and radios when the end had arrived, and hadn't been privy to what she

assumed must have been frantic news bulletins and evacuation orders. Sometimes when boredom

set in-and boredom had, unfortunately, become her most frequent state of mind-she mulled over

what sorts of theories and hypotheses the educated elite had put forth during those first few

weeks to explain what was happening around them.

Radiation, biological or chemical warfare, a natural virus...those were a few of the

possible explanations that she thought seemed the most reasonable. But then again, people

probably hadn't been satisfied with a reasonable explanation. What rational, natural process

could cause the dead to return to life anyway?

Knowing the number of conspiracy theorists out there, she wouldn't have been surprised

if more eccentric causes had been suggested as panic and desperation sat in. The religious

fundamentalists had probably had a field-day before they'd been forced to worry about their own

survival. In a way, she was grateful she hadn't had to deal with any of that- people ranting about

it being God's punishment on a sinful world or the sci-fi crazies spouting equally ludicrous

theories about hostile aliens causing the chaos so they could take over the world while humanity

was distracted.
 In truth, she supposed it really didn't matter how it had all started in the first place.

Things were the way they were, and crying about it would be about as useless as sitting down

and having an empty debate about the hows and whys of everything.

The faint chirping of birds distracted her from her thoughts then, and she lifted her head

to gaze out the partially broken window she'd been crouching behind for what must have been

several hours. The light filtering in from the outside world perked her interest, as well as the faint

mist rising from the pavement. It had been dark when she'd broken into the building, and raining,

but now it seemed the rain was over.

Might as well move on since the sun was up, she decided, rising to her feet and ignoring

the creaking of her stiff limbs. She'd long since discovered that it was safer to travel during the

day; there was far more of a chance of having a dangerous encounter at night, and she'd always

liked to think of herself as a practical person-at least most of the time...there had been an instance

or two when she'd demonstrated less than-impeccable intellect, but it wasn't like it was anything

she could fix now.

Sighing, she pulled open the battered door, pausing only a moment to cast a brief glance

over one shoulder. Not like abandoned hardware stores were luxury accommodations anyway.

Leaving her temporary shelter behind, she made her way deeper into what once had been

a small, pleasant-looking town in the northeastern United States. She was relatively sure she was

somewhere in upstate New York, but thus far hadn't come to a town she was familiar with.
 Rather depressing if you stopped and allowed yourself to think about it for too long... the

notion crossed her mind as she walked down the middle of what used to be the main street

through the quaint hamlet. Granted, it was somewhat nice not to have to worry about being run

over by a speeding car or being forced to listen to the raucous, rude honking of irritated

motorists. Still, if the trade-off for that convenience was empty streets littered with discarded

newspapers and abandoned vehicles, and rows of forlorn shops forever waiting for shoppers who

were probably never coming back- she wasn't sure it was worth it, not at all.

Abruptly, she came to a halt; nostrils flaring as she took in a scent that seemed out of

place in the abandoned town. Amid the fresh, clean smell of lingering rain and the first few

flowers of spring that were already beginning to come up between the cracks of the ruined

sidewalks, there was a taint of something nature had never produced-gunpowder.

Now on the alert, she chose her steps more cautiously; moving off of the main street and

keeping to the sides of the deserted buildings should the need to seek cover present itself.

Pressing on at a slightly slower pace, she continued her journey through the settlement.

Eventually she detected faint sounds coming from an alleyway a few meters ahead, and she

paused; gaze drifting downwards once she'd reached her destination.

Rainwater had flowed out of the narrow space between two shops and formed a decent-

sized puddle at the junction of two stretches of sidewalk, but the glistening fluid was not the
clear, transparent color it should have normally been; it was clouded with ribbons of dull red, and

particles of larger, thicker things.

The sounds became more distinct as she pondered the unsettling sight of the scarlet-

tinged water, and when she turned her head in order to glance down into the alley, a part of her

deep inside knew what she would see before she even completed the motion. The storm of the

night before had apparently not been enough of a deterrent to the raiding party; the remnants of

which lay before her now. Two, perhaps three men- though it was hard to get a completely

reliable estimate simply by observing the mutilated remains that a much larger group was

currently occupying themselves with.

A balding man who seemed to have been in his late forties at death possessively clutched

a severed arm to his chest as he chewed on the half-eaten wrist; giving a growling sound of

warning as another of the pack seemed a little too interested in his prize.

There were six or seven others besides the two squabblers, crouched over the flayed

open torso of one of the once-living scavengers; so many in fact that it was rather impressive that

they'd somehow managed to navigate the narrow alley and find enough room for all of them. A

black woman in her early thirties, a red-haired girl who'd probably been around nine years old, a

teenage boy with blood-stained sand-colored curls; whatever prejudices they might have

possessed when breath filled their lungs had long since dissipated, and they fed with relative

harmony in each others' presence; only showing a hint of what might have been called
aggression or displeasure when another tried to take a particularly choice morsel they had been

reaching for themselves.

The acrid smell of gunpowder was stronger here amid the coppery, sewer-like stench of

exposed bowels and viscera. A battered rifle lay discarded just outside the mouth of the alley,

and a few feet in lay the unmoving hulks of the two revenants the now-dead men had managed to

bring down before apparently being cornered in the alley and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers

of the undead.

These two were never going to get up and walk again, she mused, glancing at the half-

shattered skull of one and the bullet-pierced forehead of the other. One thing she'd learned from

observations she'd made during her travels...any significant trauma to the skull was enough to

both prevent reanimation in the freshly dead and destroy those already revived. As to who

revived...well, some might have thought that a bite from the walking dead was the source, but

they were wrong. Oh, that would result in a surprisingly swift death and subsequent reanimation,

to be sure. But it wasn't the only thing. Whatever the original cause, anyone that died came back-

as long as their body was fairly intact.

Reaching down, she took the gun in her hands and checked it; finding it empty of

ammunition. How desperate for supplies they must have been to have chanced a night-time raid

with so little in the way of weapons. She tossed the now-useless gun back to the bloodied

ground. Maybe they'd thought the storm would cover their movements, but when trying to evade
hunters who didn't need to worry about exposure or the other dangers that their living

counterparts were faced with, their decision had been brave at best; outright stupid at worst.

And very much unsuccessful in the end as well, she mused with a weary sort of

resignation; eyeing the garish remains that were too badly mutilated to ever rise again. The gory

sight of the dismembered corpses the restless dead were still consuming no longer made her

retch like it had in the beginning, but it didn't mean she enjoyed such a macabre spectacle either.

The messily occupied undead were taking no notice of her, but the thudding slam of a

door she hadn't yet noticed, set into the side of one of the alleyway buildings only two or three

feet away- brought her back to sudden and complete attention. At first glance, one might have

thought the man stumbling out into the early morning sunlight was a miraculous survivor of the

ill-fated scavenging party; his clothes for the most part were clean and undamaged, and his flesh

lacked the grayish pallor to it that many of the others in the alley possessed. But that first

impression was incredibly misleading. Clearly, he had been a survivor, at least of the initial

strike that had reduced his companions to the morning meal.

He'd apparently tried a final desperate measure and had broken into the side entrance of a

small fabric store to seek shelter from the death that had been closing in from behind him. His

pursuers had not followed him- perhaps they'd been content with the bounty his less fortunate

companions had provided. But he hadn't escaped completely unscathed himself. As he emerged

fully into the light, she saw the torn sleeve of his shirt and the gaping wound on his left arm; the

flesh torn by blunt, once-human teeth that hadn't been designed to rip into struggling prey. The
bite, as nasty-looking as it was, by itself wouldn't have been enough to end his life had it come

from a natural creature or a living human. The tiniest of nips from the walking dead however,

was enough to infect, and the former survivor had probably died sometime before dawn; his

narrow escape proving ultimately futile in the end.

Dull brown eyes that held a glazed, unfocused look to them turned her way; the blank

expression of the newly reanimated man seeming to study her for a moment before turning aside

in obvious disinterest; the sounds of the feeding further down the alley drawing his attention as

he stumbled towards them to join in; bloodying his mouth on the remaining flesh and tissue of

who could have been his friends or family members only a few short hours before.

Feeling not so much disgusted as disheartened, she turned her back on the gory tableau

and left the alley behind- continuing on into the town now that she had discovered the source of

the gunpowder. Her own clothes had seen better days, and it was that fact that guided her steps

into a second-hand clothing store.

No one, living or previously dead, challenged her as she entered the unlocked shop, and

she was free to browse the racks as she would have been back in her own hometown- before

civilization had crumbled and the laws of nature itself had turned upside down.

Finding a pair of jeans and a simple green blouse that matched her size, she changed in

the middle of the store- not seeing much point in hiding herself in one of the fitting booths since

there was little to no chance of anyone coming into the store to view or be offended by her lack
of modesty. At least, no one who would care about or probably even understand what she was

doing. And if the would-be gawker had still had a heartbeat, she doubted they would have

wanted to watch her undress anyway, given her...condition.

She finished fastening her jeans and straightened up to begin the tedious process of

buttoning up her new shirt. Her eyes happened to fall upon the floor-length mirror that sat

propped up against the wall a few feet away, and suddenly angry, she turned away; not wanting

to look at herself. Oh, not that she looked like some of the outright horrors she'd seen during her

travels, but even so...

Her brown hair was slightly wavy but otherwise non-descript, her features clean and

well-placed enough to make her pretty, but nothing more. There were no dramatic wounds or

mutilations marring her slender form; a little too skinny even from before. She had no missing

limbs or exposed bones to provide a blatant give-away of what she had become either. There

were a few small scratches here and there, but those had probably been caused by the branches

and underbrush she must have staggered through during those first early days; having no

memory of it, she could only guess.

The eyes that had so stubbornly avoided the reveal of the mirror were remarkably clear

and lucid; a pale blue that seemed no different than the eyes of the transformed survivor in the

alley must have once looked. But there was a drawn look to her features that set her

appearance...off, and her skin was just a little too pale to be healthy, or natural. And if one were

to look closely enough at her, they would soon notice something else that didn't seem right about
the young woman...namely, the fact that she didn't breathe as she finished the menial task of

dressing before turning to make her way out of the abandoned store.

Yes, even though some quirk of fate or cruelty of the divine had left twenty-two year old

Genevieve Bloughton as quick-witted and conscious as she'd been before the world had gone to

hell; she was still as physically dead as the revenants gorging on the repulsive feast in the alley

only a few blocks away.

***

Like many a woman before her, Genevieve's problems had begun with a man. Richard

had been the handsome, all-American boy from a well-to-do family that they claimed was every

girl's dream, and he'd wanted her.

Gen had been raised by her mother- a beautiful woman from an old, wealthy English

family who'd cut their daughter off when she'd scandalized them by running away at the tender

age of eighteen with a poor as dirt American journalist. She'd never met her father, and her

mother had almost never talked about him. They'd only stayed together for a few years because

she apparently missed the luxuries that money could provide her; going in search of greener

wallets rather than the proverbial pastures.

With her looks and accent, which men found charming- it wasn't hard for her to find a

number of benefactors willing to support her over the years. They'd lived comfortably, but Gen
had always known that none of the seemingly endless parade of men who came and went

through their apartment was her father. She'd learned at an early age to stay out of the way, and

to occupy herself with her own pursuits.

Thankfully, while she hadn't inherited her mother's stunning beauty, she did have a talent

she could find solace in; her music. Flute, violin, piano... if it could produce music, it seemed she

could play it, and play it well.

That was how she'd met Richard in fact, her junior year of college. He played the violin

because his parents expected their only son to display at least some degree of culture- Genevieve

played it because she loved it, and it showed in her performances.

From the moment they'd started dating she could sense the undercurrent of disapproval

from his family, even though they'd tried their best to hide it behind fake, painted-on smiles.

Coming as she did from a disowned, middle-class single mother with a...reputation, Gen

had always gotten from them the feeling that she just wasn't good enough; not pretty enough, not

rich enough- just plain not good enough for their precious son.

It had kept a faint line of unspoken tension running through their relationship, no matter

how many times he promised her that he didn't care what anyone thought.
 And so they'd stayed together, and Genevieve had thought she was happy; ignoring the

doubt in her gut that quietly told her that something wasn't right.

Richard had gone out of his way to reassure her everything was fine. The camping trip to

Ontario to celebrate their anniversary had even been his idea, though she knew he hated camping

and anything that had a chance to get his clothes or nails dirty in general. She loved the outdoors

though, which was why even the thought of spending the week up there surrounded by woods

and rivers had been so exciting to her.

She should have known it was too good to be true.

***

If her heart still beat, it would have stopped at the sight of Boston.

Boston, wonderful, bustling Boston. The city she'd grown up in had been hit hard by the

catastrophe. The same desolate, ghost-town feel that had predominated in the small towns she'd

traveled through on her way was even more pronounced here.

And why wouldn't it be...she mused grimly, glancing around at the eerily quiet streets, it

only made sense. The larger the population... the bigger the initial outbreak would have been.

The first undead that rose had had more people to attack, who in return would have reanimated if

their bodies had not been too badly damaged.

 Gen had the sinking feeling that the only places living humans would have had a chance

were at the very fringes of civilization.

Of course, she herself had been in such a place when all this had started, and she'd still

died, but not because of the walking dead.

No, her own death had come from sheer stubbornness and stupidity.

Still...no matter how bleak the chances, it was possible that someone had made it, even

here. And there was only one person she wanted- no, needed to know the fate of, for good or ill;

her mother.

Memories of her mother's face had been the first thing she had remembered when

conscious thought had returned to her. She'd been confused; finding herself walking on the

outskirts of a small town very close to the Canadian-US border, but those memories, cloudy and

disjointed at first, had become clearer and clearer as time had gone by.

In those first frightening days, she hadn't even realized she had changed. Genevieve had

seen the crowds of shambling, awkward undead roaming the streets, and had been terrified. She'd

run and had hidden herself on instinct; cowering behind the locked door of a small shop the same

as any other survivor would have. The walking dead had avoided her hideaway, but she'd taken

no chances; pushing furniture against any possible entrances to make sure she'd stay safe. It
wasn't until she discovered that her retreat had nothing in the way of food or water that she'd

begun to panic. At least, until another, far more profound realization had sunk in.

She wasn't hungry, or thirsty. She remained awake, tense and apprehensive, for hours,

and then days. She should have collapsed from exhaustion or stress, but didn't. Snow had

covered the ground then, and her clothes had been ragged and torn...but Genevieve wasn't cold,

or even uncomfortable.

She'd staggered into the shop's bathroom and looked in the mirror.

Had screamed at the sight of herself...

She'd known then why the other undead had made no move to attack her, and why the

basic needs of her body had not made themselves known during her isolation.

They didn't attack their own...

It had taken weeks on foot to reach Boston. She hadn't dared take a car, despite the

abundance of abandoned ones she'd found. Her one and only direct encounter en route with the

living had come in the form of a small raiding party, similar to the one that had been decimated

and devoured in the town she'd acquired a change of clothing in some time before.
 Feeling hopeful, she'd taken a step towards their battered pick-up truck, but before she

could call out one of them had taken a shot at her with his rifle.

Surrounded- and ignored, by the horde of walking corpses... she supposed she couldn't

blame them for assuming she was one of them. But in an odd way, it had still stung. Thankfully,

his aim had been bad, and his attention was soon diverted by the mobs of revenants that were all-

too interested in their arrival. She'd pulled back into the eager crowds, not wanting to risk him

getting luckier with his second shot.

On foot or not, she did have an advantage over a living survivor. No need for food, water

or sleep meant she didn't have to stop. The only times during her travels she'd sought shelter was

during heavy rain, and that was more from the inconvenience of getting wet and her vision being

obscured than from any true sense of discomfort.

She'd kept going; the need to find her mother becoming the single driving force that

guided her steps. And now that she was finally here...

With a feeling of foreboding, she let her steps take her down the same streets and

sidewalks she'd wandered since she was a child; the achingly familiar shops and apartment

buildings completely transformed, probably forever.

 Windows had been smashed here and there- the contents of the small grocery store on

the corner a block from her apartment looted; probably by people grabbing supplies before

fleeing the city.

On the edge of town, it hadn't been so bad. None of the restless dead she encountered

had been anyone she'd recognized, but here...

Mr. Grayson, who'd run the candy shop that was the source of some of her few truly

happy childhood memories, and who'd always gone out of his way to save and sneak her special

treats, wandered behind his counter- his right arm barely attached by a few scraps of skin from

what had apparently been a savage attack. Other ragged wounds riddled his body; exposing bone

in places. He'd probably bled to death, and it was obvious he'd been fed upon to some degree

before he'd reanimated, but not enough to prevent his rebirth.

Mrs. McCall, the sweet-natured, middle-aged lady who'd made her living with a little

snack and lunch stand now scrabbled impotently at the latch that held the door closed with hands

that were missing a few fingers, but was otherwise not as badly mutilated as Mr. Grayson had

been. She paused, seeming to regard the snack stand hatch with something resembling confusion

before batting at the lid again in an endless repetition, as if expecting the same awkward efforts

to yield different results.

They did that a lot, Gen had noticed; while many of the reanimated dead tended to walk

around the area they'd died or revived in, some seemed fixated on repeating an action they'd done

while alive. She'd seen a man, obviously once a gas station attendant when breath filled his
lungs, clutch a nozzle in his hand- lifting and jerking it towards the car that was no longer there.

As mindless as they seemed to be, she'd often wondered during her days of wandering, did that

mean they had some degree of memory too?

They certainly seemed driven by an instinctive need to feed...but why? And why wasn't

she a captive of that animalistic drive as well? They were drawn to sound, movement, and

warmth; and the barest glimpse of a living human drove them into a shuddering frenzy of

reaching hands and gaping mouths. But before that man had shot at her, the sight of him had

stirred nothing inside Genevieve except...loneliness.

There was no sign of anyone, living or otherwise, when she stepped through the front

door of the apartment building she had once shared with her mother. She hesitated at the bottom

of the stairs, listening intently. Nothing...no sounds at all save for the rustle of the wind through

the dead leaves and desiccated newspapers that littered the once pristine tiled floors.

She climbed the stairs slowly, in no hurry to find whatever she was going to find. Her

mother had always had a man taking care of her, and when Genevieve had left, as hurried as her

departure had been, she'd been seeing a rich one that seemed smitten with her. In the best of all

worlds maybe, when things had started to get bad, he'd left, and taken her with him to

someplace...safer.
 At last, no matter how deliberately she'd measured her steps, she stood in front of the

apartment door, hesitating before she tried the knob. Finding it unlocked, she felt a surge of

hope. Surely it was unlocked because no one was there anymore.

Pushing open the door and going inside, Genevieve looked around the living room. No

signs of violence or even a struggle; no hint that anything had been stolen or ransacked either.

All was as quiet as the lobby had been.

Suddenly though, a flicker of motion from the hall that led to her mother's bedroom

caught her attention, and she turned her head; immediately regretting that she had done so.

Josephine Bloughton had remained beautiful into her middle years, and she was still

beautiful... even in walking death. Her curly auburn hair spilled loose down her back and across

the whiteness of the long flowing nightgown she wore, pale skin unmarked by disease or trauma.

But her eyes- once vibrant and blue were as cloudy and unfocused as any other revenant that

Genevieve had seen.

Gen staggered back, pain that had nothing to do with her unliving body tearing through

her before she composed herself. She walked up to the older woman, placing her hands on the

cold, silk-covered shoulders. "Mom..." she whispered, tightening her grip, "It's me...Gen."

There was no flicker of recognition, no hint of higher thought at all as the undead that had

once been her mother peered at her in the same way an animal would when confronted with an
unknown creature. There was no trace of the woman she'd known, and loved, despite her

imperfections.

Instead, the animated corpse of the only parent she'd ever known merely gave her the

same brief, evaluating glance that any of the hungry dead gave her; before her regard dropped in

disinterest- sensing somehow that she was neither threat nor food.

Genevieve's hands dropped limply from her mother's shoulders, making no move to stop

her as she wandered across the living room and disappeared into the kitchen.

How had she died?

Her mother had been healthy when she'd left for Ontario, so if violence hadn't ended her

life, then...

On instinct she strode from the living room and went down the hall to her mother's

bedroom. The answer came in the form of an empty bottle sitting on the nightstand; the same

prescription sleeping pills the woman had been using for years. The bottle had been almost full

the last time she'd seen it...

Flinging it against the wall in sudden rage, Genevieve strode back into living room, and

paused. The anger provided the closest thing to warmth she'd felt since reviving, but it faded

quickly as she stared at her mother. Returning to Boston, coming home; that had been the only
thing that had kept her moving. As futile as the prospect might have been, the mere chance that

she might have found her mother alive and well had been the spark of hope Gen had needed to

cope with her new form of existence that made no sense at all. The other undead left her alone,

so she was sure she could protect her mother from their predations, and even if she might have

been frightened of her daughter's state at first...once she explained, once she knew that Gen was

different from them...everything would be fine.

At least, that had been Genevieve's fantasy.

And now...

The kindest thing, she knew, would be to put her mother out of the state she was in. They

didn't own any guns, but a quick blow to the skull, as long as it was hard enough would

accomplish the same goal. The other undead wouldn't even try to stop her. But...

In the end, she took her keys and locked the door behind her; moving on deeper into the

city.

Her steps were aimless now.

Now that her question had been answered, she wasn't sure where she would go or what

she would do. She felt numb, and so it was with no small amount of bewilderment that she
eventually found herself looking up at another residential building, one in a neighborhood far

removed, financially speaking if nothing else, from the one she had left.

It took her a few moments to realize that she was looking at the building where Richard

owned an apartment, for the times he hadn't felt like staying at his parents' place.

Anger, hot, and immediate, was reborn in her again, and she closed her eyes until the

feeling had passed.

She went inside, and this time there was no doorman to challenge her right to be there;

no stuffily polite but firm employees to ask her to leave- after Richard had warned them to keep

an eye out for her.

This building was as quiet as her apartment complex had been, but there were signs of a

struggle here. She reached the landing of the floor Richard had once called his own, and stopped

at the sight of the bodies collapsed on the other side of his door. They'd been the walking dead

too at one point in time, but now they lay still-silenced by several well-placed shots to the head.

The apartment door was still closed, so maybe he'd-

Sucking in a breath she no longer needed, she cautiously went to the door and knocked

loudly but in a deliberate pattern lest he think she was another ravenous corpse trying to gain

entry. "Rich," she called out hesitantly, wincing a bit at the hoarseness of her own voice, though
given how long it had been since she'd had reason to speak in anything louder than a whisper, it

was no wonder, "Are you there? It's me, Gen."

Silence greeted that query and the few she followed it with, and she tried the knob,

finding it locked. Frustrated, she pushed at the door, and when her attempts to force it open

yielded no results, she resorted to breaking open a fire kit she found down the hall, slamming the

hatchet it contained against the wood until the portal finally gave way beneath the violence of her

efforts.

Richard was there, on the other side of the broken door, wandering the room as

mindlessly as her mother had been. Staring at him in mute horror, she saw the bandage on his

arm, and knew what it meant. Like the newly reanimated man that had staggered out of the fabric

store days before, he'd been bitten, and had escaped; only to die and revive as the wound

poisoned and killed him.

"Damn you Richard..." she said softly, part of her wondering what she was damning him

for as she looked at his glazed eyes and the gun that lay on the coffee table a few feet away from

him.

For cheating on her perhaps? She had damned him then; had cursed his name and

regretted the day she'd ever laid eyes on him that cold winter afternoon she'd swung by his

apartment to surprise him with a bottle of their favorite wine and a bag of hot sweet and sour

chicken.
 That had been the reason, after all, that she'd taken off on the camping trip that would

have celebrated their two year anniversary. They'd been going to wait until the weather had

warmed, but the memory of stepping into this very room and seeing him embracing and kissing a

petite blonde girl she'd never seen before burning hot inside her, she'd stormed off to Ontario

alone; ignoring the troubling forecasts of heavy snow and the rattling beginnings of bronchitis in

her chest.

The last thing she remembered, before becoming conscious again at least, was sinking

down onto her sleeping bag inside the tent; hearing the howl of the blizzard wind outside and

trying to ignore the labored pace of her own breath.

She'd leave the next day, she'd promised herself; she'd go into the nearest town and find a

doctor.

There was no sense in getting herself killed just because she was pissed off at a cheating

boyfriend...

A laugh, hollow and bitter, broke the silence then, and she barely recognized it as her

own. "In a way..." she murmured once her morbid mirth had died down, "I guess I should thank

you. If you hadn't been dumb enough to leave the door unlocked when you knew there was a

chance I'd come by...I guess it might have been me stuck in here with you."
 He didn't look at her as he continued to pace the room, going from the window to the

couch, and then back again in an endless, meaningless pattern.

She picked up the gun before she truly knew what she doing; feeling as cold and as

empty as her laugh had been as she lifted it, aimed, and fired; her shot blossoming in the center

of his forehead and sending him crumpling to the floor, motionless as the dead should be.

A noise from the bedroom caught her attention then, and gun still in hand, she followed

it.

The girl that stood beside the bed was as dainty and blonde as she remembered, but her

pale green eyes were glazed, and her throat had been torn out by blunt, but still deadly teeth.

Sickness that was emotional rather than physical swept through Genevieve then, and she

closed her eyes at the realization of what must have happened.

The door to the apartment had been locked, Richard had been untouched except for the

bandage on his arm, and the violence her...her replacement, had suffered, could only have had

one cause.

In some petty, bitter corner of her mind, Genevieve debated leaving her there, as she had

her mother; but for an entirely different reason. This had been the woman Richard had really

wanted; this delicate, golden-haired piece of perfection. How ironic then, would it be to leave her
forever like this; that same beauty ruined by the gaping, jagged hole in her throat? Gen started to

turn away, and then she saw what the undead girl was doing.

As mindless as any other revenant she had seen, the young blonde was nevertheless

engaging in an endless repetition of the last thing she had been doing while consciousness had

been hers. She clutched a blanket in her bloodless hands, looking confused as she attempted to

drape it over the man who no longer lay there; suffering and feverish from the bite that would

eventually claim his life.

A new emotion rose in Genevieve then, and she grit her teeth; at war with herself, but

only for a moment.

"He betrayed us both." She said quietly, before firing the gun a second time; this time

out of pity.

She went back into the living room, sinking down on the couch and opening the

ammunition chamber of the still smoking gun. There had been three bullets left, and now only

one remained.

Her first question had been answered, and now the second, unspoken one had been as

well. Mother, former lover...both were lost to her. Nothing remained now except her, and you

couldn't really call what she was living...

 Gen pressed the barrel against her pale, cold temple, sliding her finger around the trigger,

and closing her eyes. She hadn't gone anywhere when death had taken her the first time, but

maybe this time she would. Whatever lay on the other side, surely it had to be better than this.

But still...

The gun clattered harmlessly to the floor, and she opened her eyes; considering.

All the walking dead she had seen thus far had been mindless, empty husks. But she

wasn't.

And if she was different, surely, out of the thousands, maybe millions now walking the

earth, there might be more...there had to be others like her.

One thing was for sure, Genevieve was going to find out.