Just a Touch Dead Read online

  “Your induction is over, so no more questions,” Sean said in a sing-song voice, stretching his arms out to the sides and flapping them forwards to herd everyone towards the door. “Come on, everybody. On your feet.”

  The others slowly got to their feet and shuffled towards the door, with me caught up in the movement. Sean danced between the zombies, yanked open the door and almost skipped out into the corridor. He’d bounced back from his fainting spell quickly.

  I examined the door handle as I passed. There was no lock, no swipe card access, just a door handle on either side. So how had we been locked in? Because we’d definitely been locked in, and how did Sean open it?

  We followed Sean along the corridor to a set of white double doors where a lady in the same beige chinos and blue polo shirt was ticking something off her matching blue clipboard. She’d tied her short, dark-blonde hair into a stubby ponytail, if you could call it that, and littered her hair with kirby grips to keep it off her face.

  She glanced up from her clipboard when Sean called to her. On seeing our zombie horde approach, she lifted her arms above her head and waved them in the air at us, much like Sean had earlier.

  “Yay! More dead people.” She clapped on her clipboard like Sean.

  This was going to get really old really fast. Why didn’t they have a separate area for temporaries like me?

  Sean gestured to kirby grip girl. “This is Delilah. She’ll be your guide for the next part of your journey. It was a pleasure inducting you guys. I know you’ll have a great time being dead.”

  “Yay!” Delilah cheered. “Being dead is super fun. Thank you, Sean. Follow me, everyone.”

  Delilah pushed open the double doors and walked through. Even from the back of the zombie horde I could hear the cacophony of chatter awaiting us on the other side. At least they sounded livelier than my current companions. Sean waved at us all as we trickled through. When I passed him he grabbed my arm, smile still fixed in place.

  “Please, please don’t tell anyone about the talking. Please. Promise you won’t?” Despite the smile, panic edged his voice. When I delayed in responding, he shook my arm. “Promise me. I don’t want to go to GB jail. Please?”

  I frowned at him. “What the hell is jeebie jail?”

  “Not jeebie jail, GB jail.” His eyes darted around us as he spoke.

  “What’s GB jail?”

  He shook my arm again. “Promise me!”

  I yanked my arm from his grasp. “Yes, yes, I promise.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone else. And stop telling people you’re not dead. Do you understand?”

  “Why?”

  “Just don’t.” He stepped back, his smile widening as he clapped his clipboard and pointed to me. “You have a great time being dead, you hear?” He didn’t wait for a response, just jogged back along the corridor.

  I frowned after him. “This is so not how I expected my day to go.”

  “There you are, lollygagging behind. Come on.” Delilah linked her arm with mine and pulled me through the doors. I removed her hand from me. Why did everyone keep touching me? Death, temporary or otherwise, did not eradicate the need for personal space.

  We emerged onto a small balcony overlooking eight incredibly long lines of people queueing patiently for their turn at the booth. It reminded me of passport control. Only there was no luggage, no crying children and a lot less shoving. I found that creepier to watch than if it had been chaos. Chaos I could have understood. People rallying against the injustice of dying I could have gotten behind. People shoving to get to the front in a hurry to get back to their bodies seemed reasonable. People waiting patiently to have their dead, or temporarily out-of-body, passport stamped? No. Or maybe they’d just had an induction that was more than two sentences long so they knew what was happening. I wondered which was the temporary line. Probably the longest, knowing my luck.

  The chatter bounced off the hall’s high ceiling and windowless walls. Despite the lack of stained glass, the acoustics and exposed brickwork reminded me of a church. After the passport booths, the width of the hall quickly narrowed into a corridor barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast and ended in another set of white double doors.

  “Now, everyone.” Delilah clapped on her damn clipboard. “Please follow me down these stairs as we head to what we affectionately call ‘the sorting room’.”

  Delilah descended first, waited at the bottom of the stairs for our sludge of people to follow and ushered us through the door straight ahead. The room was an exact replica of the one we’d just left except it was empty of desks and instead of having a pull-down door on the metal chute it had a pull-up flap, beneath which was a large canvas bin. I had a horrible, horrible feeling I knew where this was going.

  “Remember those forms you filled out?” Delilah moved to the centre of the room so she could see us all. “Now it’s time to collect them and take them to processing. Yay!” She waved her arms in the air again as if this was such an amazing feat. When no one moved, she shepherded everyone towards the bin.

  I let the zombies go ahead and waited for her to walk back to me. “Are you telling me that we slid our forms down that chute only to collect them now?” That better not have been what happened.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Delilah clasped her hand and clipboard over her heart with a genuine expression of mild distress. “The top of the chute isn’t my department. I have no idea what goes on up there.”

  I stared at her. Had nearly dying made me extra irritable or were these people just super annoying? I blew out a breath and adjusted my fringe. Again. “Okay. Do you know where these forms come from?”

  She nodded, obviously happy she could answer that question. “The chute.”

  “Okaaaaaay, so what happens in between us sliding them into the chute and them coming out? They get stamped or checked or somethinged, right?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Delilah shook her head. “That’s—”

  “Not your department?”

  She clapped her hand on her clipboard and pointed to me. “Exactly. Gosh, you pick things up quickly, don’t you?” she said with no hint of sarcasm whatsoever.

  “Be nice, Bridget. Just be nice,” I muttered to myself.

  Delilah winced apologetically and placed her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. Didn’t you hear me introduce myself? My name’s Delilah, and I’m always nice.”

  I moved her hand from my arm, sighed and gestured to the bin. “I’m going to get my forms now.”

  Delilah clapped on her clipboard and pointed to me. “That’s it. PMA. Positive mental attitude. All the way.”

  “I’ll PMA you all the way in a minute,” I muttered, standing at the back of the horde.

  When it was finally my turn I bent over the rim of the bin to collect the mess of paper that was my forms.

  “Follow me, please, everyone.” Delilah headed out of the room and towards the queues.

  We waited while Delilah split us up evenly across the lines. I glanced around at my section of the group. They looked as zoned out as everyone else. Everyone except me moved to their allotted lines.

  “Did you forget which was your line?” Delilah asked when she saw I was still standing by her.

  “No, actually I was wondering which one of these lines was the temporarily-separated-from-your-body line.” I made a sweeping gestured to encompass all the equally long, equally slow moving queues.

  Delilah blinked at me nonplussed. Her face was completely devoid of any expression for at least ten seconds, and then she giggled and placed her hand on my arm. “Oh, you’re a hoot. You’ll have such a great time being dead.” She leaned closer, still smiling, as her eyes darted to the front on the queues. “Maybe keep the jokes to yourself until you’re all the way through, though, okay?”

  Her hand on my back, she ushered me to the queue she’d assigned to me and placed me in front of my zombie group mates, casting another furtive glance to the front of the hall.

  “I wasn’t kidd
ing. I need to get—”

  “Shush.” Delilah placed her finger on her lips and backed away so she could see the end of all of the queues and called our attention back to her.

  “One last thing, guys. It’s been my genuine pleasure to guide you down the stairs and both in and out of the sorting room. Enjoy queuing, and I know you’ll all have a great time being dead.” Delilah waved, turned her back on us and headed up the stairs again.

  The middle-aged man in front of me in paint splattered, navy overalls scowled at Delilah’s back. “If one more person tells me they know I’ll have a great time being dead, I’m going to turn violent.” He cracked his neck as if to emphasise the point. “I mean, really violent. You know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know.” I wasn’t exactly sure it would drive me to physical violence, but the next person that clapped on their clipboard and pointed to me was going to get a rather stern talking to about how to deal with people. Never mind the next person to shush me.

  The man extended his hand to me. “I’m Mike.”

  I shook it. “Bridget. I’m guessing since you can hold a conversation you’re not dead either?”

  “Nope. I’m dead. Broken neck,” he said, cracking his neck again as if it were somehow out of joint and he was trying to rectify it.

  “This isn’t the temporary line?” I stood on tiptoes, scanning the room for the liveliest queue. I’d been very much hoping that maybe Delilah and Sean were extremely inept, instead of just moderately inept, and that the temporary queue just wasn’t their department.

  “I don’t think there is a temporary line.”

  “So where do people like me go?”

  He took a step back and looked me over. “Aren’t you dead?”

  “Nope, just having a day trip from my body while the doctors pump me full of drugs. Or a coma dream. Or a really vivid nightmare. If you’re dead like everyone else, how are you talking to me like a mostly rational person?”

  “No clue.” He shrugged. “How are you having a day trip away from your body?”

  I shrugged back. “No clue. But I’d kinda like to get back to it. Preferably before the doctors shave off all my hair or pull the plug on me because I’m not waking up. So, do you know what happens here so I can maybe whizz on through?” I pointed to the booths that were so far away they reminded me of the houses in Monopoly. Maybe the temps just went through with the regular dead folks and they separated us later. Unless they got a move on, that wasn’t going to work for me.

  He shook his head. “I’ve no idea. I think they do something with your forms and then let you pass through.”

  “Have you only just died?” He was taking it pretty well.

  “No, it was a couple of days ago now, I think.”

  “You don’t know how long you’ve been here?”

  “There’s no windows, no clock. How would I know?”

  “Well, the only people behind you are from my group, so it can’t have been that long.”

  He laughed but there was no humour in it. “They close a booth every few hours when someone’s shift finishes and then that queue is divided up and sent to the back of the other queues.”

  “What happens when they reopen it?”

  “They take a percentage of the people at the front of every queue and send them to that booth.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “So, you could be at the front of one queue and then they send you to the back of another queue?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  Suddenly his threat of violence didn’t seem so unreasonable. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel after days of queueing. I couldn’t stay here for days though, so surely there must have been an express system for people like me. Surely.

  I looked around for any of those idiot clipboard-clapping reps pulling people out of line like they did at airports for the VIP check in. I could hear lots of chatter but most of the people I could see weren’t talking. In fact, Mike and I were the only ones.

  “It’s a tape,” he said, swirling his finger in the air to gesture around the room.

  “What is?”

  “The noise. The chatter. You were looking for who was speaking, right? And couldn’t see anyone.” I nodded and he swirled his finger in the air again. “It’s a tape. Every now and then it jumps and someone—”

  As if on cue, the tape jumped. The chatter sped up to the point where it sounded like hyperactive birds cheeping and then just cut out. The silence that followed it was deafening. There was nothing. No muttering. No shuffling. No coughing. No sniffing. No basic hum of human noise. Nothing. The air was thick with a dead silence. There was no other way to describe it but dead. I’d never heard anything like it before.

  The tape kicked back in and the chatter resumed.

  Mike raised an eyebrow at me. “Creepy, right?”

  I nodded, eyes wide. “Yeah. Does every dead person have to pass through here?”

  “I think so, judging by the mix of ethnicity, but” – Mike shrugged – “they might be holograms and this might be hell.”

  “I imagined a lot more fire and brimstone in hell.”

  “Wait until you’ve been queuing for a few days, reached the front three times and then got sent to the back of another queue. Then talk to me about hell.”

  I stepped back and eyed Mike. That sounded a lot like another Greek guy who’d been damned to eternally push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again. Pretty sure his name hadn’t been Mike, though. So either my coma brain was creating a dream populated with Greek legends, or the afterlife hadn’t changed all that much since ancient Greece. Wasn’t that an odd thought? It definitely had to be a coma dream. Maybe getting through this process was my mind’s way of fighting back to consciousness. No, that couldn’t be right. My brain knew me better than that. If it had wanted me to get through this process quicker, it would’ve incentivised me with the promise of a free pair of Jimmy Choos to the first person through. If that’d been the case, I’d be awake by now.

  I leaned out of the queue to peer along the line of people and at the booths. “Who are they?” I asked, nodding to the men in black jumpsuits and black burglar masks. One stood by the side of each booth. I wasn’t a fan of masks. To me it negated personal responsibility for your actions.

  Mike shook his head. “No idea. I’ve not seen them move except for shift changes. They reminded me of the beefeaters at Buckingham Palace.”

  I watched them a moment longer. “Do you know why we’re not allowed to talk to each other?”

  “Apparently it means you’ve not taken to dying very well.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “The implication being the zombie horde around us have?”

  “That would be the implication, yes.”

  I glanced around at all the vacant faces. “I feel they’ve got that backwards.”

  Mike huffed a laugh. “Didn’t I explain the queuing system to you? I feel they’ve got a lot backwards.”

  “So what happens if they think you’re not taking dying well?”

  “They cuff you and drag you off through those doors.” Mike pointed to the side of the room at a set of black double doors. They stood out like a shadow on the wall.

  “They look pretty ominous,” I said before peering out of the queue towards the front again. “Wait, I thought you said you hadn’t seen them move?”

  “I haven’t. Other than shift changes and arresting people,” he corrected.

  I stared at him. “I’m pretty sure you should’ve mentioned that. And how do you know they’re being arrested?”

  “Why else would they handcuff you?”

  I opened my mouth to give him some options but I couldn’t think of any. I considered a couple of situations that might require furry handcuffs, but none that involved getting dragged through a set of doors to who knew where.

  “So why did you take dying so well?” I asked.

  “I think I’ve taken to dying pretty well, myself. Just sort of took it in my stride. Apparent
ly, according to the black jumpsuits, that means I’m ‘emotionally maladjusted’.”

  I frowned. “That doesn’t really make sense.”

  “What about this place does? Did you have to toss those forms down the chute?” Mike asked, pointing to the paperwork in my hands with his own wad.

  “Do you know what happens in that chute?”

  “Nothing happens in that chute. You throw them down for health and safety reasons.”

  “What health and safety reasons?”

  “It’s in case you were to injure your back or knees with the extra weight walking down the stairs.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “They make you do it so you don’t have to carry the extra weight down the stairs and possibly cause an injury.”

  I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again, gasping like a fish for some sort of response. I had nothing.

  “That was my response too when I found out. I’m surprised they don’t make us wear gardening gloves while handling the forms to protect us from paper cuts.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve been queueing here for a long time.”

  I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand. I could not queue for a long time. I got palpitations if I had to do it for longer than five minutes in the real world, and that was usually when I was just food shopping. I couldn’t do it here when I had my body to get back to.

  “That doesn’t make the queue move any quicker,” Mike said, watching me peer out of the line again.

  “We’ve got incoming,” I mumbled as I pulled my head back in and stared straight ahead.

  “What do you mean?” Mike moved as if he was going to stick his head out of the line to look but I stopped him.

  “Y’know those beefeaters who never move except to change shifts and arrest people? Well, one’s coming this way.” I stared straight ahead and aimed for my most vacant expression. Mike cursed and did the same.

  The black jumpsuit came to a stop next to me. I didn’t turn to look at him, but out of my peripheral vision I could tell he was tall and broad enough to deter a normal person from picking a fight. He’d slicked his short, dark hair back like the other black jumpsuits I’d seen so from a distance they were almost indistinguishable.