"Hey, how's it going," the zombie said as he came up alongside me. I kept walking with my eyes ahead as he shuffled along just out of reach.
"You want to stop there and have a chat?" He said, his lips missing and teeth exposed. "My friends are all back there. We could sit down and have a drink."
"Nah, I'm cool." I said and thought about making a run for it.
"What's the matter? You have a problem with our kind?" The zombie said.
"No," I replied. The zombie PR campaign had been running ads on tv all week. Sure, I believed in equal rights, but was I really racist if I ran away screaming from talking zombies?
"Why don't you stop for a second then and have a chat? Talking never hurt anybody?"
I looked at him. He had decomposed more gracefully than some. His skin had some holes and was a mess but his hair was still quite nice. A perfect coif flowing down his shoulders. He must have had it styled before he died.
"Look, I'm not racist or anything. I just don't know you, you know?" I said, still walking.
"My names Mike." The zombie said wrenching an arm in my direction. He noticed me stop and stare at it suspiciously.
"Nice to meet you Mike. I'm Jenny." I said.
"Whats the matter? You don't shake?" he said. We stood there in awkward silence for a second until a worm crawled out of his sleeve. He must of saw me cringe.
"I see," he said. "Fine, I'll leave you and your kind to yourselves and you leave me and my kind alone."
The extermination squads had painted a different picture in their ads than the zombies. They made hunting look like fun, even to Jenny who had never fired a shot or harmed an animal in her life. The zombies, on the other hand, painted the extermination squads in a different light. In their ads, the groups attacked hordes of zombies with katanas and shotguns without any provocation. In the zombie ads, the extermination groups looked more like bigots.
"It's not like that," I said.
"Why don't you shake my hand then?"
"Let's say I did. Would you do anything else?"
"Like what?" Mike said.
"Like try to eat me?"
"Is that all you think we do? How stereotypical. You people don't know anything about us. I chose to be this way." Mike said.
"What?" I said.
"Never heard that before? I chose to be like this and I'd do it again. All of us did." Mike said indicating his friends "You really believe we just chase people around all day groaning BRAAAAIIINNNSSS don't you?" he said, his voice dragging out over the street.
"Well..." I said looking around. His friends stood at a distance watching us. No one else was there.
"Do you smoke? You ever been high?"
"No..."
"You know, when I died, I swear I saw what was going on behind all that," he said pointing at the buildings around us "and now I don't need them. It was like being high, but better because it was truth. It was something true that all the buildings and technology around us couldn't explain and it's different for everyone. It's like everyone gets their own special piece of the puzzle. Why we're here. What's better is that we get to come back to share it with others. We're working it out together, all us zombies.... And you people, you won't even come over and shake our hand." Mike said, shuffling back in his torn pants to his group of friends that waited for him.
Watching him go, I wondered if he was telling the truth. If he was, wouldn't it be worth the chance?
"Mike!" I said "Wait!"