The zombie lifted up his putrid head and met my eyes. There was almost a smile there on the rotting lips. Then it held out its hand to me. I’d seen worse. Most of the skin was still there, but when I grasped it and felt the loose, half-liquified flesh beneath depress in my grasp, felt its horrible softness, like gushing memory foam—when I felt it squeeze back!—I couldn’t help but shiver. It chuckled at that, the dead man. It is one of the few human noises they can still make.
They have a sort of communication so that, what one knows, so do the others. The means are unknown, but word spreads fast among the dead—faster than among the living. Yet, the peace did come. The hoards receded from the few remaining strongholds who eventually received the news of and later believed in the peace.
He released my hand and chattered, in that toothy way they have of speaking, that we could be friends until the invaders were repelled.
“And after that?” I asked.
He chomped his teeth up and down.
I nodded.
“Same.”
Tale Told 