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BY BRIAN KEENE

Even in death, she returns to visit ht

If time mattered any more, you&039;d be able to set your watch by her arrival Mary shows up shortly after the sun goes down She lu her shattered right leg behind her like it&039;s a dog I often wonder how she can still walk

Of course, all the dead walk these days, but in Mary&039;s case, a shard of bone protrudes fro, just below the knee The flesh around it is shiny and swollen - the color of lunch meat The wound doesn&039;t even leak anyher to fall over, for the bone to burst through the rest of the way, for her leg to come completely off But it never happens

Her abdomen has swollen, too We were never able to have children, but death has provided her with a cruel pantonancy ases trapped inside of her finally reach the breaking point Her breasts have sunken, as have her cheekbones and eyes Her sus off her frame in tatters It was one of my favorites - white cotton with a blue floral print Si but Her long hair is no longer clean or brushed, and instead of s like honey-suckle shampoo, it now sernails are filthy and cracked She used to take so much pride in them Her hands and face are caked with a dried brown substance I tell myself that it is mud, but I know in my heart that it&039;s blood

None of this , but Mary is still the woman I fell in love with She is still the most beautiful woman I have ever known She is still my wife, and I still love her Death hasn&039;t taken that away It has only ether Death does not overco, but those memories do not decay I aht after night, and stare at the house, fu for a way in? It can&039;t be to feed If it were, she would have given up by now,development a few miles up the road, where I am sure there are still plenty of families barricaded inside their hos I don&039;t knohat she does during the day Certainly it isn&039;t sleep The dead never sleep I assume she eats Wanders, perhaps But the question reht? Mary doesn&039;t know I&039;h she paws at the door and the boarded-up s, she can&039;t see inside of our house She can&039;t see me or hear me So why does she return?

The answer is si res, but somewhere, rooted deeply in whatever is left of her brain, there is sonizes it as home Maybe she just knows that this was a place where she was happy A place where she once lived

Mary hated e party She was an artbusiness I was a drunken frat boy, a young Republican in training, the next-generation spawn of the Reagan revolution Mary was a liberal Derams When she walked into the party, a blonde and a brunette were feeding h a lanced in our direction then turned away I was instantly infatuated Not love at first sight, but certainly lust Love caot her nuet a date with her I was on ht We saw Pulp Fiction (I loved it; she hated it) We went to Denny&039;s (I had steak and eggs; she had a salad) We went back to her place We talked all night Kissed a little, but mostly we just talked And it onderful When the sun caot it

We dated for years and broke up a half-dozen tiht We were just very different people Sure, we shared some similar interests We both liked to read We both enjoyed playing Scrabble We both liked Springsteen But these were small, superficial similarities At our core, ere different from one another There are two kinds of people in this world - my kind and Mary&039;s kind But we made it work We had love And ere happy

Until Haave it, because the disease started with the rats Hae where the Pied Piper cured the rat problem once and for all Except that in real life, the rats came back, infected with a disease that turned the dead into rotting, sha machines Some television pundit called theht that was funny at the tier The disease ju humans It jumped oceans too It showed up first in New York, but by the end of the week, it spread to London, Mumbai, Paris, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Hafr Al-Batin, and elsewhere Arht it You could shoot the dead, but you couldn&039;t shoot the disease Global chaos ensued Major metropolitan areas fell first Then the smaller cities Then the rural areas

Mary and I stayed inside We barricaded the house We had enough food and water to last us a while We had weapons to defend ourselves We waited for the crisis to pass Waited for someone - anyone - to sound the all clear and restore order But that soone outside just for a second to du as a toilet A dead crow pecked her neck Panicked, Mary beat it aside and ran back into the house The wound was just a scratch It didn&039;t even bleed

But it was enough

She died that night I knehat had to be done The only way to keep the dead froun to her head while she lay still, but I didn&039;t have the courage to pull the trigger I couldn&039;t do that to her, not to the woman I loved Instead, I cracked the door open and placed her body outside

The next un to my own head and did to myself what I could not do to my wife That should have been it

But I ca corpse No, I a on the kitchen floor, but I am not in it All I can do is watch as it slowly rots away I can&039;t leave this place There is no light No voices froreet me from the other side

There is only meand Mary

I cannot touch her Cannot follow I&039;ve tried to talk to her, tried to let her know that I am still here, but ht, I cry for us both, but I have no tears, so my sobs are just the breeze

There used to be two kinds of people in this world Now, in the aftere, there are two kinds of dead - my kind and Mary&039;s kind

We made it work once before

I wonder if we can ain?