"In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit-"

  "Amen." Poe murmured, his feet kicking impatiently at the front pews before his father brought the sermon to an end. He did not want, or even needed to come, but felt he should support his father while his more devout mother went shopping with C

  It had been a mistake, not even Preacher Fargo’s above average charisma could help stir around the gloomy atmosphere that hung in the downsized churchyard. Poe had spent most of his youth here, and it once been packed to the rafters for most of his adolescence. Now there was only a smattering of the elderly and small families here and there, most of whom were immigrants escaping whatever dismal country in search of the American dream.

  He wanted to escape from this American dream, to run away and spend his last few days with friends before he headed back off to Harvard University to continue his studies in philosophy. He was to start his third year soon, and was between two minds on what philosophical worldview he should specialise in. There was a calling to existentialism, which closely reflected his own personal philosophy and the rejection of hard determinism, which frightened him. The more rational part of him, however, believed that was already a crowded field, and he should focus his final thesis on something more niche and out of his comfort zone.

  Even by the time he’d arrived at Harvard, he had all but shed the religious scales in which he had been raised in. If there was a spiritual part of him still, he ruefully wondered if it too would be dulled and eventually lost by the time he’d completed his degree. He did not confide in his father about his wandering faith, as it would be another trouble in which he might have no answers. All Poe could do was smile and bring forward the good news. The good news.

  "Bad attendance." Poe remarked as he approached him at the alter steps. Immigrants, it seemed, did not linger long enough in a place of worship to make small talk.

  "Are you sure?" Fargo Watterson whispered, "I think we've set a new record for second helpings of communion today.”

  Poe smiled. Even as attendance was cratering and the small churchyard was beginning to be downsized, his father still carried that humorous spirit of his. He felt thankful for that, even as he pulled away a large wooden statue of Jesus, and noticed, in the graveyard, that many had left the faith with their dearly departed too.

  When the Soviet-Afghanistan war begun, no one would’ve predicted it would ended with Lenin’s shambling corpse moving defiantly through the streets of Kabul. Not even Poe, the horror movie fanatic, who had created his own shrine to George Romero in his adolescence, and who the world had now regard as a prophet with his textbook work the Night of the Living Dead.

  From what the rest of of the world had gathered, a battalion of soldiers from the Soviet Defence Forces had been giving a collection of black magic scrolls that were imbued with all sorts of mystical powers that transcended the space between life and death. It had been a gift from a mountain chieftain, a nomadic dweller really, in gratitude for saving his life against an assault by the Mujahideen, Afghan natives fighting to avoid being dragged into the USSR’s sphere of influence.

  The chieftain disclosed little about them before he disappeared into the desert, other than they had been passed from one Afghan to another, and were unusable until someone could unravel the tongues that bound them together - Sanskrit, Hebrew, Hieroglyphics, Aramaic. A middling corporal could, taken the words apart as half his battalion got drunk on vodka, while the others strewed in their makeshift graves, strewing together as they heard evocations of black magic in a shaking, Russian accent.

  The world changed once that corporal was finished. Soon the Mujahideen found themselves trying to face off Soviet Zombies as they trampled their way to the darkened walls of Kabul. Afghanistan began to crumble under the weight of the cascading plague, and soon the Soviet-Afghanistan war had come to end much more quickly than anticipated.

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  The odd stories of one eyed corpses moving through Kabul, feasting on the flesh of Afghans while dressed in red berets and urshankas, had been reluctantly dismissed by the international community, until general secretary Brezhnev arrived in Kabul alongside Lenin’s lively mausoleum corpse. The Kremlin then decided it would renew the lives of the soldiers lost in the Great Patriotic War, and eventually, on the borders of East Berlin, green skinned soldiers of the Red Army looked hungrily ahead on what the West and NATO had to offer.

  Poe could recall seeing all of this transpire during his first year at Harvard, in fact he had almost flunked out in first semester considering how glued he was to the common rooms television screen. All Poe could think about was the vast potential zombies could bring to the world - not just the recently deceased, but those who’d been lost centuries prior. Why read about Socrates and Plato, when you could bring them back and hear them give own accounts without a scruffy, overworked professor getting in the way?

  By his second year, he would come across his first zombie while studying at the Radcliffe library on campus. He was in a strange daze, trying to figure out if Descartes had lost his mind while coming up with dualism, when he heard a creak on the flooring and the abated breaths that let words come out once in a while.

  Blonde haired with a cut above the right cheek, this was another student who’d drowned during the annual Harvard rowing competition between it and Yale. Her parents had agreed to let Harvard resurrect her on their behalf, and she was nothing like the Soviet Zombies Poe had seen in newspaper clippings and on air. In part, because she was so well preserved, and also in the great strides made by the American government to unravel the secrets of the black scrolls after copies were stolen by American spies. He felt a childlike sense of wonder coming from her as she passed him by, along with a strain of a neck and and much pain trying to articulate anything other than basic yes or no answers.

  Poe wasn’t sure yet what to make of it all, and neither did the US, or the rest of the world. Most states had enacted bans on the practice for the time being, but a few felt the practice was worth exploring, even if it was kept best inside an experimental facility. Massachusetts had only recently allowed zombies during the Summer, and Poe expected he would soon see more when he returned to Harvard next week, as well as lectures on the ethics of zombies that weren’t just philosophical, which would come to dominate academic discourse for the rest of the 20th century.

  “Having troubles?” Cassie asked, peering in at him from the doorway of her room. It was her room he was studying in, but it was also the only one of their two rooms which had a landline connected to it. Poe had been busy waiting upon calls as he studied, ones he could not forgo unlike Cassie in her teenage years. He’d been thankful that he never connected one into his room, which likely gave him the grace and time to study and get into Harvard, while Cassie had to settle for the middling, state university of Bringham.

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, I don’t think you’re having troubles with Sisyphus and Camus,” She mused as she stepped in, “so tell me what’s up.” She was always able to tell when Poe was on the verge of falling apart in his day to day life.

  "My roommate isn't going to stick on with me for the next semester."

  "And? Just find someone else studying at Boston."

  "It's not that simple," Poe responded, "I'm not exactly in the most developed of neighbourhoods.” He could not blame anyone who’d stay clear of boarding with him, as a small apartment in the south side of Quincy was all the Wattersons could afford to house him in as he studied philosophy, and forming a mean sceptical streak in the process.

  His last roommate did not like waking up early in the morning to find Poe, dressed in only bright underwear, writing another dreadful essay on the Enlightenment concept of Tabula Rasa, and how it did not bear up to modern scientific scrutiny.

  “Just forget about all this for a night,” Cassie said as she plonked herself on her teenage bed, “and come with me to a party.”

  “A party?”

  “It’s at Winston’s.” Poe did not like Winston very much at all, a young southern man with slicked black hair and who was to inherit the throne of his father’s telecommunications business once he retired, but Cassie had doted upon him very much. It was no great secret she was enamoured, but everyone else saw an unrequited love that was to go nowhere.

  “If you don’t agree to come, I’m going to make philosophical puns all night.”

  That was enough for Poe, disdain for Winston or not. She reached for his hand, and soon they were off down the staircase and into Cassie’s hand me down Buick from their distant grandparents.