Reilly comes in with a bowl. "Grub's up," he says cheerfully, kicking the door closed behind him. I'm standing in one of the corners when he enters, so I spot the armed soldiers outside the door as it slides shut. Reilly must have been coming to see me daily for at least two weeks, usually twice a day, but they never take chances. He always has backup in case I make a break for freedom. The soldiers outside couldn't save him if I decided to bite or give him a playful scratch, but they can make sure I don't get more than a couple of steps outside the cell.
"What's on the menu today?" I ask sarcastically.
"Lamb chops."
"Really?" I gasp.
"No, you idiot," he grunts, and hands the bowl to me.
I stare at lumps of cold gray meat in a jellyish substance. It's the same thing he's given me every day.
"I'm sick of this," I mutter.
"You will be in a minute," he laughs, then scratches his head. "What difference does it make? You can't taste anything anyway."
"It has no substance," I sniff. "I might not be able to taste it, but I can feel it as I grind it up, and it feels like frogspawn."
Reilly winks. "Maybe it is."
He's never told me what the meat is, just that it's laced with chemicals that will help me adjust.
"What would happen if I refused to eat it?" I ask.
Reilly shrugs. "You'd go hungry."
"So? It's not like I'm a growing girl, is it?"
"Trust me," Reilly says, "you don't want to go hungry. The dead feel hunger even worse than the living. Makes sense when you think about it. If you're alive and you starve, eventually you die and that's the end of your suffering. But if you're dead already, the pain goes on and on and on."
"Do you feed the reviveds too?" I ask.
"Just eat up, B. I don't have all day."
I know from experience that Reilly doesn't care whether I eat the gloop or not. I threw it back at him one day, to see how he'd react, if he'd try to force me to eat. He just shrugged, turned round, exited and let me go without.
I pick up the spoon at the side of the bowl and dip in. It took a while to get the hang of my new fingers. At first I tried picking up things with the bones sticking out of them. But I soon realized that I could grip like I did before, by using the remains of the flesh beneath the tips of my fingers. The bones aren't as much of an inconvenience as I thought they'd be. The only thing I can't do is close my hands into proper fists - the bones dig into my palms - but I can keep the fingers flat and bend them down until they touch my palms, and that's almost the same.
"What's happening in the world today?" I ask around spoonfuls of the cold, oily, slimy gruel. "Anything exciting?"
"Same as yesterday and the day before," Reilly answers glibly.
"What about the soccer? Do the zombies have a team in the Premier League?"
Reilly laughs. "I'd like to see that. Undead United!"
I grin and carry on eating. Reilly's all right as prison warders go. I don't trust him and I'm sure he'd fire a bullet through my head without a moment's hesitation if ordered. A day might come when we have to lock horns, and maybe one of us won't walk away from that clash. But he's treating me as humanely as he can - more than I probably would if our roles were reversed - and I appreciate that.
I spoon the last of the food into my mouth, chew a few times and swallow. "All done, boss."
"Like I give a damn," he says, taking the bowl from me. He crosses to the sink and picks up the bucket beneath it. Water was supplied to the taps once Reilly had warned me not to drink any of it, just use it for washing, and the bucket was put in place before he brought my first meal.
"Give me a minute," I grumble sourly. "I want to savor the moment."
I can no longer process food or drink the normal way. Reilly says it would sit in my guts, turn putrid and decay, unaided by any digestive juices. The bits that broke down into liquids would flow through me and dribble out, meaning I'd have to wear a diaper. The solids would stay inside me indefinitely. If I ate enough, they'd back up in my stomach and throat.
"Would that harm me?" I asked Reilly once.
"No," he said. "But maggots and worms would thrive on the refuse and insects would be attracted to it. You'd become a warren for creepy crawlies and they'd chew through you. They couldn't do any real damage unless they got into your brain and destroyed enough of it to kill you, but would you want to live like that?"
The image of insects burrowing through my flesh made me shiver so much that, if I hadn't been dead already, I would have sworn that somebody had walked over my grave.
I can safely eat the specially prepared food that Reilly gives me, but I can't keep the bulk of it down. According to Reilly, when the scientists first started to experiment, they used intravenous tubes to feed nutrients to the zombies. He said that's still the best way, but since most people prefer to eat, the good folk in the labs came up with a way for us to act as if we were still capable of enjoying a meal. The gray crud is designed to release nutrients into our clogged-up bloodstream almost instantly. But we have to get rid of the rest by ourselves.
"Come on," Reilly says, tapping a foot. "You're not the only one I have to deal with."
"I won't do it until you tell me how many others you look after."
"Doesn't bother me," Reilly says, turning away. "You're the one who has to live with the stink and insects."
"Wait," I stop him. Pulling a face, I lean over the bucket and stick a finger down my throat, careful not to tear the soft lining. The gray stuff comes surging back up and I vomit into the bucket, shuddering as I spit the last dregs from my lips.
"Not very ladylike, is it?" I grunt as I pass the bucket to a smiling Reilly.
"I don't think you were ever in danger of being mistaken for a lady," he says, "even when you were one of the living."
"I could sue you for saying that sort of thing to me," I huff.
"Lawyers don't represent corpses," he smirks.
I snarl at the grinning soldier and gnash my teeth warningly, but Reilly knows I'm not dumb enough to bite him. One of the first things he told me was that I can still be decommissioned, even though I'm already dead. As I already knew, zombies need their brains to function.
Even if they didn't want to kill me, they could punish me in other ways. I don't feel as much pain as I used to, but I'm not completely desensitized. I dug one of my finger bones into my flesh, to test myself, and it hurt. When I pushed even farther, it hurt like hell. The dead can be tortured too.
"By the way," Reilly says just before he exits. "You'll be entertaining a couple of visitors shortly, so be on your best behavior."
"Who's coming?" I snap, thinking for a second that it's Mum and Dad, torn between delight and terror at the thought. Part of me doesn't want them to see me like this. If they're alive, that part would rather they believed I was dead.
"You keep asking questions," Reilly says. "About the attacks, revitalizeds, why you're different to reviveds, how you wound up here. These people can give you some answers."
"Reilly!" I shout as he steps outside. "Don't leave me hanging like that. Tell me who..."
But the door has already closed. I'm locked in, alone and ignorant, as I have been for most of my incarceration.
But not for much longer if Reilly's to be believed.
