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Art of the Dead
By Jason R. Beirens

There’s something electric about the art of the dead: Boney hands scratching into the stone walls, skin falling from the bones to reveal the dry stumps of bone, dust flowing like blood.

In the same way that animated death challenges the artist, so this dilemma our planet finds itself in challenges the philosopher. How and why did it happen? Why are acres of red algae killing fish; why are whole lakes drained dry in Russia; why are ice blocks the size of Rhode Island falling from the edges of Antarctica?

Death and it\'s macabre forms, whether the crumbling of the face of a planet, or the eroded dermis of a dead man, it\'s all game for the artist to render and the philosopher to ponder. However, that is not the present question, I am a watcher, and I came to merely observe the behavior of a few captured zombies.

Perhaps it was because they were dead that they understood dead things. Putrefaction caused Technicolor fungus to form, excrement on a sidewalk brought brightly colored butterflies to eat, and a dead mussel shell laid bare by a bird glittered with mother-of-pearl rainbows.

When they started to make art it intrigued me. Creation implies thought, thought implies life, but how can death imitate life? Yet does not a seed have to fall into the ground and die to create a new plant? Doesn\'t a chrysalis have to lay morbid and dead to create imago?

The zombies are dead. Of that there is no doubt. Close observation shows no respiration, no blood flow, no brain activity. There are just tired neurons that fire the last deteriorating electrons into dusty lobes which is no different than evening clouds coalescing at dew point to fire off lightning in the distance. The small amount of proteins and hormones their brains pump implies the simplest of creatures, one celled organisms, maybe amoebas. Can amoebas create art? A few scientists have observed that in desperation, a colony of amoebas can join together to be a multi-cell organism, to build a tower, and at the pinnacle of that tower, a few brave cells transmute into something amazing - they fire into the microcosm\'s equivalent of the stratosphere and launch out to give their life a new chance in a far off realm.

These zombies do the same.

I broke the watcher\'s code and handed the zombies pens and paper through the gun barrel holes in the plexi-glass wall. The mark making is reminiscent of Neanderthal, but the imagery is far different. No antelopes and buffalo, but modern cars and buildings. Of course, zombies relate to brainless constructs and animated machines far more than flowers and deer.

The newest image that the lone female produced is obviously a pumpkin.

Do they know Halloween is coming up? All Hallows Eve, the night before All Saint\'s Day when the dead live briefly to dance in cemeteries and mausoleums and grave sites. Yet, how could they? All outward observation suggests that the creatures have no capacity to remember their former life. The artwork cannot lie though, and the constructs created by their decrepit, gnarled, claws and perceived by desiccated eyes tell me they know what is happening around them. Something new has happened, some new art has generated from death, and they are afraid.

I have began to sit with them against the clear plastic wall of their cell. I’ve crossed the divide and am no longer a watcher but a participant and they are teaching me. We sit and draw together, the older zombie male is the best of the artists. Perhaps he was one when he was alive? Perhaps they all were.

I show them what I have done, and they have begun to do the same. They show me and I imitate them. Death shows life, and life shows death.

They seem to critique each other at times. Three zombies gather in a corner, their arms flail, and small sounds can be heard at times.

The older male during one of these sessions rips the arm off the younger male.

I stagger back trying to be silent. I have not witnessed violence between them before. The female lich comforts the younger male, her hand on the side of his face. My God - if there is a god - is this love? If there is art, why not love?

Then she picks up the arm and takes it back to her companion. It is wriggling like a dying worm. I feel like I am watching the macabre danse of a troop of babbling baboons. Still, they seem to care for each other.

We watchers have studied the genetic make up of zombies, just as Jane Goodall studied the chimpanzees of Gombe. The analysis of these three reveals that they were not family in previous life. Are they now?

I lean into the wall and close my eyes. I am tired. When I look up again, she is now face to face with me. Is it curiosity, or does she want to rip my arm off.

I fight the urge to jump back in horror. She looks into my eyes with her dead ones; her left eye is still perfect, the right is a hollow socket. She smiles with rotted and yellow teeth of cracked and lifeless enamel. Teeth that are now more mineral than living. She holds up her pumpkin picture.

I think for a second and then I whisper, “Happy Halloween.”

She whispers the same back to me.

I fall backwards. She twists her head to one side with the creak of dry rope, and she smiles. Then the older male rises from behind her and escorts her away.

My group of fellow watchers - scientists - sit around the table and debrief me. They are unsure of what to make of my ethical violations. They just stare into the air. Finally the silence is broken, “They talked?”

I reply “It was mimicry I believe, but they have no real vocal chords. They have all rotted out. It\'s the creaking of vines blowing in the night wind.\"

My colleagues all sit looking worried. My breach of ages-old traditions has brought new knowledge. They chant their eldritch and babbling mantras that I now forsake. They silently pray to whoever there is to pray to that they are not the one to tell the General Watcher what has happened. I don\'t care. The zombies are more alive than this coven of illuminati. I retch to think that I was once like them.

A sleepless night then it is decided that I will tell the General.

I walk into the office of the General, adjust my uniform\'s collar.

“What is it?” his voice gruff, aged with spearmint tainted cigarettes and licorice laced booze. A nasty habit he picked up among the locals. He smells faintly of mint and vomit. He\'s facing the wall.

“Happy Halloween sir.” I say, stalling.

“Is that all? I almost wish I had candy to give you.” I hear a smile in his sandpaper voice. I\'ve caught him in a good mood. A mood that will soon turn sour when I tell him what I\'ve done. He will not care that I bring new knowledge. The role of the General is to guard the clan of Watchers, and therefore he is given the wide discretion to become aberrant and decadent. He is our sin eater.

“Sir, that\'s not all. The specimens, the two males and female we have in subbasement C. They are talking, sir.”

The habit of addressing him as a superior is hard to break. He\'s quiet, then slowly turns in his chair to face me. He looks tired, totally amoral in expression.

“Talking?”

“I believe it is mimicry sir, but yes\". Thinking quickly I add, “That is why I said Happy Halloween to you sir. The female repeated that back to me.”

“Why would you wish them a happy anything?” he asks truly curious, but also with subtle anger. He suspects the betrayal of my oath. Perhaps he thinks I want to be General. I\'d like to tear his arm off and see if I laugh.

“I have been studying them intensely of late sir. It was reflex more than anything I believe.”

In my soul, I wonder if their reflexes are more of life than the watchers’ existence.

“I see.” he lights a cigarette and takes a drag, “Keep me informed of their vocabulary. Dismissed.”

As I walk back to the elevator I realize how lucky I was. He could have killed me right there. He\'s the General. If I died, have I been with the zombies enough to catch their virus and be a zombie after death?

This must not bother him much, the decadent sod. I press the button for the elevator and wait. I\'m joined first by one soldier, then another. Drones. Not able to be Watchers, so they serve as our protection. Both are armed to the nines. Heavy artillery, Kevlar everything, very little skin revealed. Though I recognize the first soldier, my brother, I don’t say anything, he only nods. This drone who is part of my blood, my genetics, is less alive than anything I have ever observed. Neither machine, nor person, he is soldier and that defines, just as the uniform expresses rank.

The elevator doors open and we all three walk in. I press the button for Subbasement C and my brother nods to the other soldier, then they stand at attention for the duration of the ride up. This makes me wish for the bad music that was once pumped into this elevator. The silence is nerve-wracking. I reach into my bag slowly and take out a photo of the drawings the zombies have made. I hand it to my brother.

“I have seen them. It is very strange”.

His voice is hollow, stilted. “The female talked?” the other soldier asked. Word spreads quickly among those whose job is surveillance and order keeping. They must know I\'ve desecrated the Watcher\'s guild, so they only wait to act, to do what they must to me.

“Yes, mimicry, but yes.”

The elevator doors open and I\'m accompanied back to the zombie cell. It\'s dark in the outer area. A couple of my colleagues now take notes on how the zombies interact. The female draws something that looks like a witch on a broomstick. How does she remember these things. Her brain is dried strands of protein that allow only the smallest amount of neuron activity. Hardly enough to keep her moving, yet she remembers.

I step up to the glass and put my hand on it, knocking a little.

She turns and smiles. Is she glad to see me? She hurries over to me and puts her hand to mine. The six inch glass separates us. She scratches at the clear barrier a little, then remembering pulls away.

The younger male lays still in a corner holding his severed arm. It\'s nothing more than strands of dried muscle and leather skin. When it was removed the small flow of blood turned to dust and decomposed very quickly.

The older male stares at me. He doesn\'t like me. The watchers are now making notes of my actions.

“Step aside.” my brother had his hand on my shoulder. His hand was rough and heavy. His fingers buried under a few inches of armor and fabric.

“General wants them fired.”

“Why?!” I was horrified.

My colleagues didn’t move, they were not worried, others would take the zombies place.

“Smart zombies are dangerous zombies.”

“But they can clue us in to their minds. I thought that was what this was all about.”

The barrels click into place in the plastic holes. The explosions from the guns annihilated the three who created art, who learned to love, who created newness from death. The Watchers make notes on my reactions. The two soldiers take out the weapons and look at me. I do not move. My brother turns his weapon toward me, I close my eyes.