us. If you don’t join us today then who will? If our numbers ebb, so does our strength. And if our strength ebbs, our entire cause falls to ruin, and men like them win.” Fitzgerald pointed at the parade official, who smiled nervously.
“And men like them win.” Fitzgerald pointed at a throng of KKK marchers ahead in the parade queue, clad in full, white regalia, formed into ranks and files.
“Damn right,” a zombie man with half his face torn from his skull shouted. The damage in his jaw caused the words to come out: “am, ight.”
“I am not saying that you can’t leave if you don’t want to. Far be it for me to impede on your right to choose. You may leave with no protest from me or from any member of the AZP.”
Nobody moved. All AZP marchers stood solid, like a single body of conviction.
“That’s what I thought,” Fitzgerald said. “I am proud to march with you this day. Prepare yourselves to deliver the message of the Allied Zombies for Peace.”
A cacophony of grinding shouts through gritty, half-decomposed throats erupted from the AZP marchers. Arlo Fitzgerald smiled to himself as he lowered the megaphone and let it dangle from his shoulder by its leather strap. He wheeled around on his heel and pointed with his good hand, two fingers directly at the eyes of the fat parade official. The man straightened an imaginary tie and coughed even though he didn’t need to.
“Today we will march,” Fitzgerald said. The words chilled the fat parade official. But the words Fitzgerald didn’t say, the words that he couldn’t have known to say that warm November morning were: today, I die.
Chapter 2
Dex hadn’t believed mere rhetoric could ever make a difference until he had met Arlo Fitzgerald and listened to his words. Just a year before, Dex had criticized Fitzgerald for his peaceful approach to undead rights. Dex had belonged to the White Jackals, a zombie militant group. But after meeting personally with Fitzgerald at a closed conference for undead rights groups, he had been won over to the AZP. The White Jackals hadn’t succeeded in getting the ear of the president of the United States. They hadn’t ushered legislation into law to protect undead property. Zombies were well on their way to becoming enfranchised thanks to Arlo Fitzgerald. The White Jackals did little more than hold splinter meetings to talk about how to make pipe bombs.
Dex stood in the parade queue, surrounded by his fellow Allied Zombies for Peace, ready to march. Their placement behind the KKK enraged Dex. But, like Fitzgerald had said, their cause was bigger than a few thrown beer cans and catcalls from a hostile crowd.
One of the masked cowards from the KKK ranks shouted at Dex. “Looks like your fearless leader is about his usual business; he’s taking you to hell like a flock of gutless sheep one step at a time, you know.”
Dex tried to spot the man who had said the words, but couldn’t identify him from the throng of white-hooded Klansmen. “Why don’t you take off your dunce-cap and come face me like a man?”
“Because you’re not a man,” the voice said. Dex scanned the KKK ranks for any sign of the accoster: a pair of moving lips, a nod, a gesture of the hands. The unidentified Klansman shouted: “You’re just another snow-faced gray without a soul. Give us twenty years and we’ll clean up all the trash. You and your bloodless friends will be a thing of the past.” Several of the KKK marchers chuckled.
“Let it go,” Ozwald, Dex’s longtime friend, said. “All they can do here is sling words. Remember the big picture and let them call us grays all they want.”
“You’re right, but it sure pisses me off.”
“Why do they have to be so hateful?” A woman neither Ozwald nor Dex recognized said. Long bangs covered the side of her face and one eye. The other eye gave away a little too much about her inner turmoil. The acrid smell of decomposition came from her mouth as she spoke. Traces of red blood vessels tracked across her face and under her chin, sure signs that she hadn’t been undead long. “The name’s Ozwald, this is Dex,” Ozwald said.
“Margy,” the girl said.
“This must be your first march,” Ozwald said.
Margy nodded.
“Your parents around? I’m guessing they are still warm,” Ozwald said.
“I don’t have parents, not any more.” If her eyes could, they would have welled up.
“You’re not alone; most of us have no association with our warm families. But look around, you have friends—people who understand.”
“I attended my own funeral,” Margy said, looking at her shoes. “My dad wouldn’t even look at me.”
“At least you are alive,” Dex said.
“If you call this living.”
“You see him?” Ozwald pointed at Fitzgerald, who stood with a couple of his aids. “He’s paving a new road for us. The truth is, we could bring a lot to the table if the warm-bloods would listen to us, if they would enfranchise us.”
One of Fitzgerald’s aids had no arms or legs. The man’s defiled torso rested like a vegetable in a specially made wheel chair. “All I see is a collection of broken people with no hope of ever becoming whole. I don’t even know why we are here, marching in some obscure Veteran’s Day parade,” Margy said.
“Fitzgerald is a war veteran,” Dex said.
“So what?”
“Of the Civil War. If it weren’t for the good warm-blood who took him under his wing and showed him he could still be a man after he turned, Fitzgerald would probably have been lynched during the reparation period,” Dex said.
“Imagine what Fitzgerald could bring to the table if warm-bloods would listen to him—all that history under his belt—all that witnessing and understanding. He is underappreciated and underutilized,” Ozwald said.
“What does the past have to do with the here and now?” Margy said.
“Everything,” Ozwald arched an eyebrow. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Fitzgerald is one-hundred-thirty-two. At eighteen, I don’t expect you to understand the power of life experience. Someone who can reach that far into the past has great insight into what will happen in the future. Fitzgerald has the knowledge to warn the world of pitfalls.”
“How’d you die?” Dex said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Margy said.
“It’s healthy to talk about it. When did you die?”
“Twenty months ago.”
“Murder?”
“Car accident.” Margy looked at her shoes again, a pair of mud-splattered mary-janes. With her white tights, she reminded Dex of Minnie Mouse.
“Any survivors?”
“They all survived: my boyfriend and his two friends. He’s seeing someone else now.”
“Did you expect otherwise?” Dex asked.
“Not with this face.” Margy pulled the bangs back from her face to reveal a twisted scab. She had done her best to cover the fatal tissue with makeup, but her one cataracted eye, starring grossly to the left, nestled in a nest of ruined skin and sinew, would never become beautiful again, at least to a warm-blood.
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Dex said. “A good majority of us can’t even walk, some can’t even move from the boxes they live in.”
“All the more reason we are here today, ” Ozwald said.
“I hate it.” Margy smoothed her bangs back over her ruined flesh.
“At least you are here,” Ozwald said, “It’s a start.