Lucia and the Slepford Zombies

Lucia angrily stubbed out her cigarette. She reapplied her lipstick carefully. She didn’t really like the shade but no one could be too damned picky these days, not unless they were one of the wealthy, powerful bastards that lived in the pod stations several miles above the earth. The bastards who had stockpiled the very best for themselves in the months before the devastating contagion had broken out. The bastards who did nothing to help and who were perhaps monitoring the situation for any personal gain or even for entertainment. Hell, they might have even been the ones to have engineered it all.

Her burst of annoyance and frustration was due to lack of sunlight, exercise and fresh air. She wanted to go outside but three zombie women were milling around the French doors, trying to get a glimpse of their reflections. They vapidly smiled and simpered at each other; they fluffed out what was left of their stringy, sparse hair with bony fingers and appeared to be posing for clothing ads.

At least the afflicted women of Slepford were more interesting than the men. What few synapses left flickering in the brains of the men were only engaged in moving their mouths as though they had important things to say., looking pompous and sitting at desks with their feet propped up and hands behind their heads.

The zombie women weren’t so different than they had been before, smiling and primping, fussing in the gardens, now overgrown with weeds, looking in the shop windows downtown, most of which were locked to them.

“Damn it,” she hissed, followed by a sharp intake of breath and then a sigh. Well she’d just use her repellent, a cheap cologne from Macy’s. Before the contagion, most of the women had been accustomed to perfume that was no less than $300 an ounce. This had been the better part of Slepford after all.