The Dead
By Michael Swanwick, first published in Starlight 1 (Tor Books)
A sleazy New York City businessman is offered a deal to work supplying African zombies to companies as cheap blue-collar laborers.
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In the near future, Donald sits as a restaurant with his co-worker, Courtney, in Manhattan. Zombies serve them their food and their wine. Courtney proposes that Donald get in on a new business venture with her, in which they would work for a company named Koestler Biological. Donald is shocked: Koestler supplies African corpses to companies. They hope to expand until zombies occupy every blue-collar job in the country, and eventually, the world. To convince Donald, Courtney gets him on a call with Koestler’s boss, Mr. Koestler. He invites the pair to a fighting match in Queens, in which an unfeeling zombie annihilates a human opponent. Donald signs the contract, but he returns home, feeling like the last man alive. He knocks on Courtney’s hotel room, ready to have their usual post-meeting sex, but Courtney turns him away and hints that she has a surprise waiting for him in his room. He enters, and he sees that she’s left a zombie prostitute for him. Abhorred, he goes back to her room but is shocked to find that she’s having sex with a zombie herself. Donald wonders what on Earth he did.
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