The Living Dead

She looked around, getting her bearings. She'd started driving without any goal in mind, and realized she'd driven north of Van Nuys, not too far from where she'd lived as a child. Hills rose ahead of her. She and her sister used to climb to the top of those hills to see the sunset when they were younger.

She took the crow's path, cutting across lawns and parking lots and once over a chain-link fence despite a "No Trespassing" sign. What was the point of following city ordinances when you weren't even obeying the laws of nature?

Flesh was falling off faster now. She'd been buried more than a week earlier, after all, and the temperatures had to be in the nineties. Flies clustered around her wound, each carrying off a small mouthful. She thought of them as lightening her load.

The tendons in her legs weren't working as well as they had, and her gait slowed to a weary shuffle, but since she didn't have to sleep or rest or eat (though she wouldn't have minded a glass of wine) she was able to travel all afternoon and through the night. She didn't mind.

By dawn she'd reached far enough up the hill that she could see pinkish light creep over the town. She carefully sat down, her back against the concrete support of a power line, and watched the sun rise.

Time ceased to have meaning. The sun rose and set, animals carried on their daily business, and the trees got older. Her flesh rotted away, her skin and eyes dried and shrunk, and her lips pulled back. Her hair stayed blonde, her teeth were still white and straight, and her breasts still defied gravity (those silicone implants would last forever) but she didn't care much about that any more.

She'd grown lazy and peaceful, now that she didn't have anyone to impress. Whatever magic animated her left her able to think and see, even without eyes and a brain. On the day her sister hiked up the hill, she was still able to wave.

Jessica was boyishly thin and dirty, hair hanging around her face in walnut-colored dreadlocks. She had loose cargo pants, a tiny tank top, and a haversack made of Guatemalan fabric with Peace Corp written on it. Her neck was hung with bone and shell beads strung on thongs, and she had lines on her face even though she was only in her mid-thirties. She was more beautiful than anything.

Jessica sat down next to her gracefully, not winded from the climb up the hill.

"Oh, my God," Jess whispered. "I am so, so sorry."

"It's okay."

"No, I mean it. When I came back for the funeral, I had no idea. I mean, it was such a shock for me that you died in the first place, what with you being so young, and I completely forgot about the shaman. I'm sorry."

"Really, Jessica, it's okay."

"You can yell, it's okay, I deserve it. You must be so mad at me."

"No. I'm not mad. I'm happy." Jess was the only one who had been nice to Melanie since she died. How could she yell at someone who apologized to a corpse? "What happened?"

"It was this shaman, see, at least, he said he was a shaman, and he asked me if I wanted to live forever." Jess sat cross-legged with her elbows on her knees, as though she were used to sitting on the ground. "I said no, but my sister would, because you once said you were more afraid of getting old than anything else. It was kind of a joke."

Melanie waited for the rest of the story, but Jess stopped and leaned back. Melanie belatedly realized she'd been too silent. "Go on."

"I thought he was kidding. He was kind of drunk, you know? And then as soon as I got home from the funeral, I got an email from you, and then from Brandon, saying that you'd been wandering around scaring people, and I realized I'd really screwed things up. It took a month or so before I could get my visa sorted out and come back to the States again, or I would have been here earlier." Jess sighed. "I'm so sorry. It must have been horrible for you."

"No, not bad." Melanie said. It was getting harder to talk now that she didn't have lips. "Happens to everyone."

Jess pulled one of the bead and bone necklaces off. She laid it on the ground beside Melanie's bony hand. "I got him to give me this. This will let you die the second time, when you're ready." She kissed Melanie on the skull.

"Thanks," Melanie said. She didn't reach for the necklace yet, since she had all the time in the world. "But I'm going to enjoy the view for a while."

Dead Like Me

by Adam-Troy Castro