Zombie Pulp

6

Doc’s sacrifices-his selections of juicy pink meat for the Wormboys-were set to be marched out the next night. They were separated from the general population… put in isolation, as Doc called it. Why? I don’t know. Did they pose a threat to us? Did we pose a threat to them? Or was Doc just afraid that if we had to look on them and see what was in their eyes, that depthless pain and desperation, that we might start acting like human beings again? That we might feel some intrusive, obstructive things like pity and remorse and remember that culture, true culture, was built upon morality, ethics, and compassion?

In order for civilization to function, you see, people must act civilized.

Doc was nothing if not a student of human psychology by that point. He was probably worried that the whole cloth of his little disenfranchised community might start to unravel thread by thread once we stopped worrying about our own skins and realized exactly what we were doing to those poor people.

I had it out with him as he knew I would, being the bleeding heart goody two-shoes that I am. Basically, I argued that if we were condemning those people to a horrible death, the least we could do is let them be human beings with all that entails for the last day or so of their lives.

“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy,” he said, as if he were addressing a particularly stupid child. “Do you have any idea the trouble that would cause?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

He smiled thinly at that: paternal, patient, a just and loving god. “Tommy, these people need to face this together. I feel as you do for them, but misguided pity at this point will only make it harder on them and us. Nobody forced them to play the lottery. They did it of their own free will.”

“They did it out of fear,” I said. “Fear that you’d throw them out to the living dead if they didn’t.”

“We have to have rules or we have no society.”

“This isn’t a society,” I said, “it’s a fucking zoo.”

Doc just smiled patiently at me. “No, it’s a community, Tommy. We survive by working towards a common goal and thinking as one. When we lose that, it’s all over. Now…this isn’t a prison or a cult. If you’re unhappy, feel free to leave. We’ll give you a rifle, food, you can even take one of the vehicles out there.” Then he leaned in close so I could see that beyond the fatherly warmth in his eyes there was something fierce and steel-gray as a gathering storm. “But if you walk out of here, Tommy, don’t ever think you can come back. You won’t be welcome.”

I just sat there, filled with too many emotions.

“Well?”

I stayed.