Benny woke up in the school bus with a zombie stumbling behind it; they were the last of the survivors. "Drive faster!"
"I am, kiddo." Mr. Henry, his math teacher, pressed his foot on the gas pedal.
Thirty people were left in the entire fashionable town. Was Benny's mother the only woman left? Probably not, but half a generation vanished out of fear of being pulled on stage and mocked for having a face that would have been beautiful 100 years ago.
A few of the children cried.
"Save your tears for when we need them," Mr. Henry said. "Close your eyes, remember they can't hurt you unless you are willingly injected."
Zombies riding motorbikes attempted to catch them.
They had to stop at the border to be examined to be let through.
Policemen covered the border with rock salt.
Zombies could make it past the salt road.
Their gray faces moaned, and their lips grew bigger. Lumps appeared here and there, but it wasn't an infection; the lip filler expanded, and the chemicals migrated to the other decaying parts of the flesh.
All this was because of a hunger for beauty.
Benny's parents were still asleep holding the babies, but whose babies were the lost ones?
The zombie stumblers left the babies behind because the babies cried too much.
"No salt! No salt!" The zombies screamed out, but they would die without it. But they needed warm adult bodies to become addicted and women and men took the fillers even after they knew what it did because it would make them beautiful, at least for a little while.
The addiction to beauty changed everything.
