We sit at the segregated table with our “frozen treats”. It’s the Summer Fayre and, in her earlier impassioned speech, the Mayor said everyone should have ice-cream. Even them.
We don’t want ice-cream. It’s so fucking cold. A recipe apparently created for our “unique tastes”: it’s grey, grainy, full of ice chips. Still, we’ll make like we’re happy to be included.
While segregated.
On account of the kids.
‘How long we staying?’ Marlon asks.
‘Long enough to show willing,’ I reply. ‘Part of the community and all that shit.’
‘Grateful for their “Tolerance and Acceptance”.’ Rich quotes the overused slogan that you could get on pins and bumper stickers in the early days. I’ve seen whole tubs of them in thrift stores.
Earlier, one of the WARRs (nasty-ass Christo-fascist women who refuse to accommodate us) stood watching us receive our ice-creams. She didn’t speak, showed us the firearm tucked down her ass four times. Then the Mayor’s assistant moved her along.
These people are community, Ms Carlin, don’t bother them none. Then he’d smiled at us with all his veneers, you enjoy those treats now, boys.
A treat is red and hot. It makes you growl. It tastes like Thanksgiving every time. A treat is a WARR with her hand bit off so she can’t fire no shiny pistol.
As if picturing the same things, Rich grinds his ice-cream into the sawdust with his boot. Spits on it. ‘I can’t finish this.’
‘What’s even in it?’ Marlon pokes the grey mush with the little wooden spoon.
‘Cow brain,’ I say, my own “treat” abandoned, melting so it looks like dirty dishwater. ‘Misty from the diner told me.’
Marlon hoots. ‘Would that be the Misty you’re currently boning?’
I shrug, wondering if I can blush. ‘Aye, she says they blitzed a load of cow brains and put it in the blast chiller. Hey fucking presto, dead man’s ice-cream.’
‘How the fuck’s that even work?’ Rich asks, sipping his warm beer.
We all have the beers – flat and piss-yellow, smelling like dirty horse hay in recyclable cups – they do nothing for us but, again, we’re so happy to be included.
‘What, the ice-cream making?’ I reply to Rick, trying not to show that I’ve just seen Misty in denim short-shorts and silver cowboy boots and things are shifting that shouldn’t be in a tent full of WARRs and their ugly-eyed kids who likely also have guns down their pants.
‘The girl, Scooter.’ Rick thumps me on the shoulder. ‘How the fuck’s that work?’
Marlon laughs, sets me and Rick off. People turn and stare. Fast walk their sugar-cooked kids to the other side of the barn where the old men sit in stained cowboy hats and their best plaid.
‘It works,’ I say, faux-offended. ‘Gotta go slow, mind. Less more of it’ll fall off.’
We’re rowdy now. Hollering with laughter. A necessary release, I reckon. I see hands hover over concealed weapons; plenty in here, despite the Mayor demanding a gun-free afternoon. She’s a trier, gotta give her that. Rick reckons she’s a closet “corpse fancier”. He got that term from some online community forum full of uninspired questions about our nature.
‘We’re getting a lot of attention, boys.’ I down the flat beer, wait.
She’s first over, of course. Ms Carlin. Riled up like a bull – fat and stupid as a cow. WARR emblazoned on her yellow cap. Wives Against Reanimate Reintegration stretched wide on one of the tees they sell at the gun store.
Zombie haters.
‘What we doing, Scooter?’ Marlon cracks his neck muscles.
Rich already half-standing says, ‘She ain’t here for the ice-cream recipe.’
I stand. Take a stand. We have Rights. There’s a new Constitution. We get to live if we let them live. Eat animals. Adapt and integrate.
We did our part. Every fucking day.
Ms Carlin reaches for the gun jammed in her cheeks. My vision is on her like a scalpel blade, peeling to the bone. The boys growl. Unnatural heat pours from our segregated table. Melted cow drips, drips.
Tolerance and Acceptance.
Not today.
She thinks we’re slow. That compliance made us weak. She thinks we’re sad beef lined up for slaughter. So when I open her wrist veins with my ice-cold teeth, she’s shocked. Certain she had all the power. Power in the words on her cap and that too-big ’45 her fingers can no longer grip. Her blood sprays like early fireworks and the boys become…well, they become.
Gotta say, even in front of the Major’s assistant scrabbling to get to us, even in front of wide-eyed kids with chocolate on their chins and dad-matching shirts, and even in front of Misty with her rust-red hair in those thick plaits, so do I.
We won’t kill them all. Maybe four or five; we’re not greedy. Just, it seems they need reminding. That we’ve been dead and it wasn’t for us. That we came back and now we’re higher on the chain. We’re done being segregated and, for the love of the undead Jesus, we ain’t tolerating brain ice-cream. It’s disgusting. No, it really is. The WARR though – even sweat-streaked and hateful – well she’s surprisingly tasty. Sweet even. Like Thanksgiving.
JP Relph is a Cumbrian writer hindered by three cats. Tea helps, milk first. She thrifts a lot for haunted objects. JP writes about apocalypses a lot (despite not having the knees for one) and got a zombie story onto the 2024 Wigleaf longlist, which may be the best thing ever. She has three short fiction collections and a co-authored novella out in the world.
Urban Pigs Press 
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