Last Rites by Kim Paffenroth

back at Terry. “Did anybody ever tell you about the special shows there?”
    “What?”
    “You know—sex stuff. Naked lady zombies. You know, when you see some, they don’t look so bad, and you think how you’d tap that, if she weren’t all dead and shit. I heard they have some of them dancing around, doing stuff.”
    “That’s just gross.”
    “No, really. I heard about that. I even heard they pull the teeth out of some of them, and you can put on a condom and--”
    “Stop! That’s sick. No one would do that.”
    “Yeah, I know I wouldn’t. Sounds too risky. I’d still be afraid they might bite it off, even without teeth, or you’d get diseases and shit from them.”
    “No, I meant just doing it at all. Stop talking about it.”
    Bart shrugged. “Terry, you always act like such a girl about stuff like that.” He smacked Truman in the back of the head. “Keep moving.”
    They’d marched around the outside of the city, within sight of the wall that surrounded it. It was uneven and crudely constructed, but Truman figured it was enough to keep dead people out. Shortly after the sun rose, they came to a collection of ramshackle structures—tents and various buildings made out of plywood and other materials. The settlement seemed to stretch out quite a ways from the city wall, sprawling irregularly.
    They stopped and Truman looked around. A few people shuffled among the buildings, but none of them paid any attention to the three of them. One person even led a mangy horse, which Truman wondered at; he couldn’t remember when he’d seen one before.
    He heard some music in the distance, along with the occasional shout or bang of a hammer; an engine kicked on somewhere and backfired every few strokes before puttering off again. The air smelled of smoke and exhaust fumes, must and mold, damp animals and their droppings; cloying smells like popcorn and spun sugar wafted on top of the earthier undertones. Truman was surprised, but he didn’t mind the place that much. It reminded him of the storage facility where he’d met Lucy—a place of leftover, forgotten, broken objects, but where one could find things other people didn’t notice or appreciate. He hoped Lucy was in a place like this and that they hadn’t taken her to a place of intimidation and violence, which the living always seemed to prefer.
    “Where you figure this guy is?” Bart asked as they looked around.
    “I don’t know,” Terry answered. “I’ve never brought anyone here. It’s been months since I’ve been here at all.”
    “Me too. Looks like it’s gotten bigger.”
    “Yeah. I heard on the radio they were adding stuff.”
    A little black girl emerged from one of the better kept buildings—a trailer with a proper door and windows. The windows had bars across them. The girl wore a short yellow dress, and red rubber boots with big black dots on them, so that they looked like ladybugs. Her hair was done up in two pigtails, one tied with a piece of blue yarn, the other with a piece of white ribbon. She was the first person to stop and stare at the newcomers. She seemed the most interested in Truman, studying his face from a distance.
    “Hey,” Bart said to her. “Hey, little girl. Do you know where we can find Doctor Jack? The person who runs the show? We want to sell him our friend here.”
    The girl stared another moment before answering. “Yes, Doctor Jack buys dead people. He’s funny. I’ll take you to him.”
    “Thank you.” Bart gave Truman a shove as they started to follow the girl, who wended her way between the buildings and tents, her boots slopping in the mud.
    She looked back at them. “Doctor Jack says he’s not a real doctor, you know. But he’s so smart. Teaches dead people to do all kinds of tricks. He says he’s the only one in the world who can train them so good, and I believe him. What do you think?”
    “I don’t know,” Terry said. “You might be right.”
    The girl turned forward to keep leading