Moon Corpses

There were to many corpses to bury on Earth in the year two thousand fifty.

Overpopulation caused a drain on the worlds resources, and now people were starving and dropping like flies.

This was great news for me, however, because I was a mortician and business was booming. The food pandemic had made me a rich man.

I had an engineer build a special machine that launched bodies into space. It was like a cannon, but with a longer trajectory.

Some of the bodies got caught in the moons gravity and circled around the moon. I called them moon corpses.

It was midnight when there was a knocking on my door.

I hastily dressed and crossed the room to see who was knocking.

“I was sleeping. Who is it and what do you want?” I shouted through the door while looking out the peep hole.

“Mr. Smith, it’s Davie Jones,” he said.

“Davie? Didn’t I blast your wife into space already?” I asked.

“Yes. But there’s a problem,” he said.

“Can this wait until the morning. I’m tired,” I complained.

“Please can I come in,” Davie said. I opened the door.

“This better be important,” I said and opened the door.

“Mr. Smith, there’s been an incident. My wife, she…” Davie stopped speaking.

“Spit it out. I’d like to get back to bed sometime tonight,” I said.

“She fell back to earth. She landed right outside the mall a short while ago. She was spotted by security. They called the police who called the coroner. The coroner wanted to know if he can leave her here,” Davie said.

I looked behind Davie and saw the coroners car.

“What? I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t have happened,” I said.

I waved my hand to the coroner to bring her in.

“Come by tomorrow. We can have her relaunched as soon as your ready. And if you don’t tell anyone, I can have her buried at your discretion as my apology for this unfortunate incident,” I said.

“Thank you,” Davie said. I nodded and he left.

The coroner rolled the corpse inside. It was in worse condition then when I originally launched it. But after falling through space, that made sense.

“You know where to put her, George,” I said. He winked at me and took her to the room with the other corpses and into the body drawer.

“Alright, Marty. He’s in the old slab on the wall,” George said when he was done.

“Great. See you later,” I said and gave George a tired smile before closing the door and locking up.

I woke up early the next morning.

After a short, warm shower, there was more banging on my door. It was louder then the one last night and sounded like multiple people.

“Who’s there,” I shouted when I got to the door.

“Several of us,” someone shouted.

“What do you want?” I barked.

“Our families are falling back to earth. Open up,” another shouted.

“Oh, dear,” I said and opened the door.

“Look, I don’t know why they’re coming back. They were launched far enough into space where this shouldn’t be happening. I confirmed this myself with my telescope,” I said.

“I’m an astrophysicist and I think I can explain,” a balding older man wearing a JPL jacket said.

“You see, some of the bodies got locked in to the moons gravity, but instead of falling to the moon, the corpses circled around the moon and were sent back to earth. If Mr. Smith here relaunches the bodies away from the moon, they should stay in space,” the man said.

“I’ll get right on that. I sincerely apologize and will gladly relaunch everyone’s loved ones into space. For free, of course,” I said.

“We want refunds,” a man shouted.

“Sadly I can’t do that, I’d go bust. But again, I’ll do my best to remedy this problem. Please have the coroner bring your loved ones here and I’ll relaunch them away from the moon,” I said and tried to smile at the raucous crowd.

“Yah, yah,” some of them moaned. The crowd slowly dispersed.

I closed my door and turned around to see the drooling, rotting corpse of Davie Jones’s wife standing in front of me.

“Ahhh,” I screamed.

She growled, a foul odor wafted out of her mouth.

“Ms. Davie Jones, what are you doing out of your locker?” I asked.

She moaned and ran towards me, jaws snapping up and down. When I grabbed her head and pushed it away, she wrapped her hands around my neck.

“You’re incredibly strong for a dead woman,” I said.

I managed to push her into a wall, which caused her to fall.

“Hey, I know what will cheer you up. Some morgue humor. Why did the morgue attendant quit his job? He got cold feet!” I said. She moaned.

“No good? Let me try again. What did one morgue worker say to the other? ‘Hey, let's grab a cold one after work!’" I said. She moaned again and started to get back up.

“Maybe I’ll stick to my day job,” I said and ran to grab a weapon. I went outside and found a shovel in the yard.

I turned around and saw Ms. Jones slowly walking towards me.

“Come on, bring it,” I snarled.

When she got close enough, I shoved the shovel into her neck and cut off her head.

I studied the body.

“I can’t believe zombies are real. I wonder how this happened,” I said.

To prevent her husband from seeing her in such bad condition, I put a thick coat on her that completely covered her neck before reattaching her head, which continued to bight at me.

After the reattachment, I was worried her body might again reanimate, so I tied her legs and hands behind her back as a safety precaution.

A couple hours had passed when the same people came running back to the morgue.

“Our dead relatives are attacking us,” one of them shouted.

“We need you to get them back into space now,” another shouted.

“That makes sense. Ms. Jones somehow escaped her morgue locker and attacked me earlier today. I have no idea why this is happening, though, so don’t ask me to explain,” I said.

“I think I can explain,” the bald astrophysicist said, pushing his way through the crowd.

“Seriously? Aside from Voodoo or necromancy gone horribly, horribly wrong, what possible explanation could there be for this?” I asked.

When he got to the front, he said “You see, the corpses are covered in formaldehyde. As the bodies passed the moon, the moon dust must have mixed with the formaldehyde, which would have caused a chemical reaction that reanimated the corpses,” he said.

“Is that so?” I asked.

“I have no idea. This is a whole new field of science. If we survive this, I’ll personally study the zombie corpses to see what could have possibly done this. In all my years as a scientist, I’ve never seen anything like this before. This is fascinating. Tragic, of course. But fascinating,” he said.

“I’m Stan, by the way. You launched my uncle into space about a month ago. He’s back again,” he said and stuck out his hand.

I grabbed his hand and shook it.

“Nice to meet you… again. And don’t you worry, Stan, we’ll figure out how to get your uncle back to space. Thanks to you, we at least have a working theory,” I said.

“Who cares about theories. The zombies are catching up to us. Something needs to be done,” someone shouted.

“I have an idea,” I said and smiled.

“Everyone, grab a shovel. Get the zombies all here, then get them all into the cremation chamber. We can then push them into the furnace and I will turn it on, solving our problem,” I said.

“I don’t want my cousin cremated,” someone shouted.

“I don’t either,” someone else shouted.

“We don’t have a choice, unfortunately. It’s either this or get eaten by your zombie cousin,” I said.

“Alright, I guess,” one of the crowd said. Most of them unenthusiastically walked away.

“Later, Mr. Smith. I really liked your idea,” Stan said.

“Thanks Stan. I feel a little better, knowing that!” I said and forced a smile.

I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get at least a small applause for my idea.

“I don’t hear anybody else coming up with any suggestions,” I shouted into the remaining crowd before they fully dispersed.

Some time had passed, and one by one, everyone chased the zombies into the furnace.

After we cremated them, we counted how many people’s relatives had been found on earth and compared that to the number of zombies we cremated.

“It seems we got them all,” I said to the last person whose zombie relative I just cremated.

“That’s great. Thanks Mr. Smith. Can we launch the ashes into space again?” Fred asked.

“Sure,” I said and smiled.

The next morning everyone who wanted their relatives ashes launched into space showed up at my doorstep.

One by one, I loaded the cannon, let the people say their final respects, and launched.

If only I realized then that most of the ashes couldn’t penetrate the atmosphere and ended up falling back to earth and entering most of the city’s fresh water supply, causing most of the city’s residents to turn into zombies after drinking an ash infused glass of water. This eventually led to a city wide quarantine, and I had to move my business out of state and create a fake identity for myself.

At least I now knew to launch the bodies far away from the moon. Really far away.