Warm Bodies: Awakening

Grasping At Straws

"He's not here Dad."

After a heavy sigh, Mark nodded. "I know son, I know."

For two weeks now, the news had spread through the settlement that the dead were coming back to life, and that the cure was something noone had expected.

Contact. A connection with the living.

They didn't come outright and say it, but eventually everyone knew what they really meant.

Love.

The news was greeted at first by complete disbelief and laughter, then by anger and fear as people realized that the military running the city were completely serious. Once people began to participate in the actual rehabilitation though, and the newly living started to appear on the streets, everything began to change.

The city slowly began to hope.

Colonel Grigio's plan had been put into effect - the dead were welcomed into the stadium, given a place to stay, and medical attention to address any injuries that could prove a problem once their hearts started beating again. The most essential part of the plan was time with the living. A constant stream of people visited the stadium, their sole purpose being to interact with the dead. Talking was fine, but laughing was better, and touch was encouraged - a handshake, a pat on an arm were standard fare. Some of the living took to their roles like a calling, and would spend the entire day hugging every corpse they could find. They took a lot of shit for this at first, as it was, frankly, weird as hell. But you couldn't deny they made the biggest difference.

Mark had been one of the doubters. One of the first to laugh. Laughter that quickly turned to anger. How dare these assholes tell him that all he'd needed to do back at the airport was hug his son better? Ridiculous bullshit.

Then he saw his first dead-turned-living earlier in the week. Helping out near the hospital. And he recognized her as one of the walking corpses from the airport, where his son had been since he'd died. It was an older African American woman who had always stood out to him when he'd been searching for his boy, because she had these incredible tattoos. Wings across her back and bible verses on her arms. Every time he saw her, it made him stupidly happy for reasons he didn't quite understand.

And now, she was here. And now, her eyes were brown, not grey. Her lips were full, not withered and smeared with dried gore. She stood straight, and when she saw him, she smiled.

That had struck him like an physical blow, and he'd actually staggered away, desperately trying to find somewhere quiet, somewhere away from people, because he just broke down. Completely and utterly. They were right. The dead were coming back. His son... could come back.

My son.

He hadn't seen his son the last time he'd been to the airport, and that was over three weeks ago. If the tattooed woman was here, that had to mean that others from the airport were here too. His son had to be here.

So he'd approached the military, and was aggravated to find that everyone was expected to go through an official screening process. Both he and Brandon. They apparently didn't let just anybody in to cuddle with zombies. You had to be stable enough to handle being surrounded by that many dead, and you couldn't be a borderline psychotic zombie hater fueled by vicious thoughts of revenge. That was the harder test to pass.

And now, here they were. They'd been in three days so far. The first day had been terrifying. So many dead in one large space sent every nerve he had into fits. It took everything he had not to run out the door. Brandon had fared a little better, though his eyes were sharp with fear, and he stayed glued to his father's side.

But it slowly became obvious how very different these dead were. Sure, they looked about the same, most stood about the same, milling about in short shuffling steps, and there was always someone groaning. But they didn't look at you like prey. They looked at you with curiosity, with something he finally realized was hope. Longing. Despite himself, he was drawn by it, and his initially superficial attempts to mingle when he was really there to look for his son became something more sincere. He was truly reaching out, truly caring. It started to change him too. His smiles weren't quite as shadowed, and once or twice he actually laughed. It was strange. And wonderful.

Each day they wandered the entire stadium looking for his son. And each day, despite his hope, the thought that maybe he'd been in a different section this day, maybe he'd been in a med tent that day, maybe he hadn't arrived with this lot, but would be in with the new bunch, he never saw him. He kept imagining that they'd turn the corner in a hallway where the old concessions used to be, and his son would be there. Standing, waiting for them. He tried to imagine what he son might look like now, but the image was always ruined by the grey sunken face from his dreams.

At the end of the third day, his heart was leaden. They finally asked a couple of the guards keeping watch on the crowd whether they had seen him, but the men just shook their heads blankly. They looked tired and on edge. He didn't push.

It was probably time to admit to himself that his son was really and truly dead. The most likely thing being that he'd been killed on a raid. The thought always brought with it a rapid cascade of horrifying scenarios, until he finally stopped, took a calming breath and focused on what was really going on.

"Maybe we should go back to the airport," Brandon said, glancing around the room with a shrug. "Maybe they missed him?"

Mark looked at Brandon, and didn't say anything for a little while. Ever since the night he'd said goodbye to his eldest, he'd tried to turn his back on that place. On the obsessive need to visit, to search, to watch. And even now, with the changes happening all around them, he'd still held back. Hesitant to hit that same nerve with his son.

"Are we just grasping at straws here?" he said in a fragile voice, staring at Brandon, his heart incredibly sad, and desperately needing hope.

Brandon gave him a small smirk, "Dad, the dead are coming back to life. I think it's time to grasp anything we can."

A small sob broke from Mark's throat as Brandon spoke. Embarrassed, he tried to apologize, but his son quickly gathered him up in a tight hug.

In the midst of hundreds of milling dead, father and son embraced, the older man crying openly against his son's shoulder.

Silently, the dead watched, and slowly, a hundred hearts started beating.