Warm Bodies: Awakening

Shaking Death's Hand

For the first time in a very, very long time, John Grigio was unsure of what to do. There'd always been a certain concrete rhythm to his life while protecting possibly the largest gathering of survivors on the east coast. Maintain the wall, salvage for supplies, kill the undead. Continue until doomsday, which he'd been expecting any day now, if he was honest with himself.

Now he stood, in line with about fifty of his men, facing well over two hundred corpses in the stadium. The walking kind of corpses. Surrounded by dead skeletons. The non-walking truly dead kind. That the walking corpses had helped his men kill.

Life had spun into reverse, and he had no idea what was supposed to happen next. Normally, at this point, there would be shooting followed by exploding heads. But the corpses weren't doing anything but standing there. Swaying. Some of them - and he'd had to do a double take just to be sure he wasn't seeing things - seemed to be smiling.

He wondered how much longer they could just stand here facing each other.

"Excuse me... sorry... coming... through..." A faint paper thin voice rose from the mass of dead in front of him, and slowly the group parted. From the gathered corpses came a man, dead of course, wearing a sports jacket, polo shirt and slacks. He was balding, and stared at him with intense wolf-like eyes.

A soldier nearby raised his rifle. John motioned for him to lower it, and waited for the corpse to do whatever it was going to do.

"Hi," the dead guy said, in the same whispery voice. Then he did something completely unexpected, that shook John's world a little harder.

The corpse extended his hand in greeting.

The Colonel stared at the corpse, at the corpse's hand, and back at the corpse.

"Hi," the balding zombie said again, and this time motioned up and down with his hand, as if to instruct someone on how to shake hands.

This was the moment, John realized.

Well, not shooting that kid in the head had really been the moment, but a part of him held back because he didn't want to traumatize his daughter any more. Then the boy had started bleeding, and insanity reigned.

But this, this was huge. Did he truly believe that this was possible? That the world could change? Could he make that leap himself and... change?

F**k yeah.

John walked forward, and took the corpse firmly by the hand, giving him the bravest handshake he'd ever given anyone. The corpse shook his hand again and again, and then again. And kept going. By the tenth go, John pulled away and stood facing the corpse.

The dead man looked up from the remains of their handshake and stared at John. A slow, stuttery smile spread on the corpse's face.

"Thank... you..." the dead man said.

John had a horrible feeling he was going to break down in tears in front of his soldiers. He could actually feel his eyes watering. It wasn't something he could afford now, so he clamped down on the feeling, trying to stay present, and emotionless. It was incredibly hard. Whatever he did, he had to avoid thinking about... his wife.

That closed him down, and he took a deep breath. "You're welcome. Thanks for helping my men with the skeletons."

The balding corpse nodded, and nodded back to the dead crowd, and the crowd started nodding, the movement rippling from the front to back across the mass of dead.

Now John felt like laughing. So this is what insanity feels like, he thought, and clamped down again.

"I'm John," he said, finally.