1 Zombie

I should start from the very beginning.

So. I lived an everyday life and had an average family. You know, the typical stuff you'd expect when you ask a person how they came to be.

I went to school for the first 18 years, then went to university for the next four years and got a degree in engineering. It was pretty interesting, you know, learning about how the world works, why we are who we are, the little building blocks called atoms and all that jazz.

Then I got a job, and that's where it went downhill.

You see, the job I got was… not as I expected, so to speak. There was an advertisement on the internet for a job requiring only one degree in engineering, no work experience required, and offered pretty darn good pay!

It was the golden ticket for me! Right? I don't have experience in my field, but I have a degree and a lot of knowledge about what I'm supposed to be doing - not to mention that salary was really enticing for someone who had to pay off his university student loan!

Well, what a horrible decision that was.

See, the corporation I signed up for marketed itself as an advancing tech/military/science private firm. The available position was for a junior engineer for one of their projects code-named 'GM&BS'.

In their 'official' records, the acronym stood for Genetic Modification & Bihuman Systems. A partnership between the corporation I was in and another one called 'Bihuman Systems' - a company specialising in physical human body modification - hence the BS at the end. It was a project to further research new ways to enhance the human genome to counteract the decreasing efficiency of natural selection.

The goal was to eliminate cancer, lengthen lifespans, eliminate all the defects in the human body, strengthen our mental capabilities, yada yada you get the point.

It was the penultimate culmination of our technology and understanding of the world, turned into a chance to increase our level of existence...if only that were what they did!

The fool I was.

I thought I signed up for a noble cause to improve the human race, but instead got shoved into an experiment to see whether they could make immortals!

Oh, the human dream of being immortal. Oh, the folly that I made. Oh, the regret of my decision!

And to boot, it was no normal experiment either! Everyone there seemed to be lacking a sense of empathy and a basic understanding of ethics!

When was it acceptable to skin a person and draw strange stuff on their bare muscles, only to sew the guy back up and leave him to cry alone in a metal room for days on end?

Did they not have a single tinge of guilt when they were torturing me so thoroughly?

Do they understand the pain of receiving multiple pen-sized needles without anaesthesia?

I'm telling you, it was so unbearable that I wanted to bite my tongue and be done with it.

Well…actually, I did bite my tongue off and started to bleed out, but those bastard' senior scientists' they call themselves would never let me die.

I was one of the few who survived the 'initial testing' period, the torture period more like, with my sanity intact. As such, they chose me as one candidate to be turned into an immortal, a person that could survive the horrors of their experimentation!

We were strapped to a table and connected to various tubes filled with glowing liquid through those horrifically large needles - the pain I initially felt when it entered my body was beyond my mind!

It was like someone was dragging a knife through your veins and scraping off the insides of your organs…

Worst not, I was left there in agony for god knows how long!

I tried to count the days, months…or years that passed by, but it all seemed the same to me! I never slept, moved, or had anything to do but stare at the metal ceiling lamp.

I could close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but the pain coursing through my body would never allow me to truly rest!

My sensation of time was broken in that tiny metal room, and I was this close to going completely insane!

It was to a point where I started to think positively about it!

Would you believe me if I told you that I thought I was lucky to be there... so that others don't have to suffer?

I, for one, wouldn't believe myself. No one would willingly go through that, no matter how good their intentions were.

But then…one day, like any other day, I was staring at the ceiling while being injected with the weird glowing liquid until something changed!

I felt it slightly initially, but it eventually became clear that my time there was nearing its end.

I could feel the pain fading away from my body, the ceiling lamp slowly dimming out of existence.

I knew undoubtedly that my saviour had arrived, my prince in shining armour!

Death came for me!

…

Liemann addressed the face with slack jaws and empty eyes of the zombie, "That's what occurred, hence, I am justified in my belief that I am meant to be dead." The zombie groaned, "Grr...grr...raaa..." Liemann pondered the absurdity of speaking to an undead creature. "Why am I even conversing with a zombie? But more importantly, where am I?" he exclaimed. To his bewilderment, Liemann had awoken inside a grave.

He didn't realise it at first, but after waiting for the black screen that was his vision to change - thinking that he'd died and was going to be reincarnated - for over 10 minutes, he found that he was staring at the lid of a coffin the coffin he was in.

The lid was made of heavily decayed wood, and the soil covering it was almost non-existent, allowing him to easily escape the confined and suffocating space. This led him to his present location.

"Zombie, zombie…"

As he looked down, he couldn't help but notice that his garments were tattered and worn. The material seemed to be made of something like hemp, with a simple cutout for his limbs.

It was almost as if he was wearing the clothing of a slave, a slave rag, to be precise.

However, what was genuinely unsettling was the condition of his flesh. Large portions were missing, and what remained was rotten to the point of being dry, blackened husks of meat. His skin was mostly gone, and what little was left of the remaining scraps clung to his bones, pale and withered, as though they had been untouched for centuries.

Liemann didn't want to admit it earlier, but he also found it hard to open the coffin lid, even if it was just a piece of wood. After all, he no longer possessed his pre-job, 40% muscle mass.

"I'm…a zombie too", he said with a heavy heart.

"Why…am I a zombie? Is it because I was in an immortality experiment before dying that caused this? A sorry imitation of what humans dreamed of?"

"No, could it be that this is what the afterlife is? You turn into a zombie and wake up somewhere you don't recognise?"

"That's more like being completely wasted."

He sighed.

"I can at least say that they succeeded in creating an immortal…the cheap version, at least!" Liemann chuckled to himself, finding it humorous that he was technically immortal as an undead creature. However, the reality of his immortality was so pitiful that he would rather not be immortal!

Despite this, there was one advantage to his undead state - he could still speak. "Did my vocal cords not rot?" he pondered aloud.

But he quickly pushed those thoughts aside, his mood lifting at the realisation that he had managed to escape that dreadful place. "Ha! Who cares," he exclaimed. "I got out of that awful place!" Liemann was determined to leave his past behind and focus on his present situation.

There were more important things to do than to mull over that!

He began to look around the space he was in, the darkness not posing as much of an issue as he could somehow see perfectly well in it. Well, that was a thing he could always figure out later...

Returning to the topic of concern, Liemann woke up in a grave. But he could see many other graves lying on the ground next to his. In fact, these graves were positioned in a way that created a circular formation around the cavern's centre. This empty space at the heart of it all contained a level, even surface.

Liemann observed his surroundings carefully, taking note of the absence of stalagmites and stalactites that one would expect to find in an underground space. None of the ceiling or the cave walls, the ground or the tombstones had any signs of them. It was as if the entire area was artificial, as if it was meticulously carved out by someone who had decided to bury the dead here.

"Strange...but I would suppose that is not my only concern." he mumbled, shifting his eyes from the environment he was in...to the 'people' in that environment.

Sure, a cemetery underground was odd and fascinating at the same time, but remember that he was talking to a zombie?

Well, many of them were walking around the place. Liemann was not alone with another zombie.

Liemann noticed a range of clothing among the zombies, some resembling his tattered rags, likely belonging to the lower class. Others donned full-plated armour, clanging with every step and filling the small space with echoing noise. There were even zombies dressed in regal attire, the elaborately expensive feeling unmistakable despite the ratty and threadbare appearance.

Liemann couldn't help but ponder what era he had stumbled into. "Am I in the medieval age or something? Should I have questioned the fact that the dead can move first before asking that?" he questioned himself. He carefully scrutinised the moving bodies around him, pushing aside his second question for the time being.

After carefully examining the tattered clothing of the zombies, Liemann made an educated guess. "Hmm. The most probable era would be the medieval age, based on the clothing...," he muttered.

Liemann cautiously climbed out of the coffin, brushing off the few pieces of dirt that clung to his prisoner's rags.

"Okay. Let's look around."

With slow, deliberate steps, he approached one of the zombies and waved his hand in front of its face.

"Hello, hello. This is your zombie friend Liemann. Can you see me?"

He saw the man turn his eyes upwards momentarily before returning to stare at the space in front of them, dead and uncaring.

"Well…it was worth a shot."

Liemann shrugged.

I should already consider it incredible that they can react to visual stimuli despite being dead. Well, actually, I should be impressed by the fact that they can walk!

It was probably one of the mysteries of this world.

Deciding to move on from the thought, he began to check out all the other zombies to confirm that they were all 'dead' dead, unlike him, who was 'alive' dead.

...

"I appear to be a one-of-a-kind zombie," he murmured, gazing into the eyes of the regal undead he had encountered earlier. "You're quite young, aren't you? It's surprising I can distinguish between you and the others, given that half your face had already rotted."

Liemann circled the zombie, running his hands over its clothes in search of any useful item—a knife, a spoon, a pencil, anything at all. He had followed this routine with every zombie he had come across in the cramped cavern, and this particular regal zombie was the final one he would inspect.

Pat. Pat. Pat.

The soft sound of cloth being touched resounded in the lifeless cavern as Liemann thoroughly checked their clothes, going through every nook and cranny in the hopes of finding something to help him realise where he was.

Pat. Shh. Sigh.

But alas, his hope only remained as it was. A hope.

"Hmm. I have no idea why I'm here, and the people here are buried with their entire set of equipment but not their personal belongings…"

It was bizarre.

If they went through the effort to bury a person with everything they wore, would it not be sensible also to have a person buried with their possessions?

Not everyone's dearest thing was their clothes; some people ought to have things they loved more than what they wore! Like, for example, an archaeologist or a scientist! They wouldn't care one bit about what they wore, but would certainly go mad if their work was stolen by someone else when they died!

"Okay, maybe not. Their work could still be stolen by grave diggers" he chuckled at the dark reality but returned to his original train of thought a moment after.

"Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it is just a custom that they have people buried with their clothes and...well, that knight zombie also has its armour."

He walked back to his coffin and sat on the gravestone, thrumming his fingers along the edge of the worn-down stone, feeling the smooth edges and the occasional bump between bone and rock.

"These graves are really well made too..."

"Grave…grave…grave? Don't gravestones have plaques on them?" his eyes brightened at the realisation that he hadn't checked!

Liemann hopped off and turned to face the front of the stone, his heart (?) pounding at the possibility that some information might be inscribed onto them! Things like the date and time of death or the zombies' position in society before they died!

His eyes focused on the writing; before long, he could see letters written on the stone!

As he began to read, Liemann was struck by the elegance and grace of the text before him. The curves and intricate marks that served as punctuation imbued the writing with an ethereal quality, radiating a magnificence and dignity that even his undead eyes could perceive.

It was as if the people who had spoken this language were extraordinarily well-educated and refined in their actions. They must have lived their lives immersed in a rich and sophisticated culture that had thrived for thousands of years. Liemann could only imagine the kind of civilisation that had blossomed from such a culture, one that was nigh impossible for his original world to attain.

…and that was it.

All he could do was imagine - because he didn't know how to read it!

Sigh.

He stood and hopped back onto the gravestone, placing one of his feet on top, assuming a thinking (relaxed) posture.

"Disrespecting the person who died? Well, this is my gravestone! I can do whatever I want to it!"

He sighed again, now with a hint of boredom.

"I don't think that there's a way out of here. Why would someone put a cemetery underground anyways? What kind of thing could've led to a person thinking: oh yes, we definitely should put a cemetery underground so that no zombie can escape it?"

"Actually, would they not be insane if they could think of that?"

…

And so, a couple of weeks went by with Liemann talking to himself.