I vividly remember a classmate slapping a twenty bill face up on the middle desk of my 12th grade English class declaring the world would fall into disrepair, for some reason or another. There really was no way in predicting it, a notion maybe but no real psychic ability behind this one whatsoever. It may have even been just on the tangent that we somehow wandered down but either way there was no way of knowing that it could just happen one day.

It was a stunning fall day, the leaves had turned and I was working my shift in the main lobby. Cleaning, that was my life; nothing has really changed that much aside from what I’m cleaning today. Not so much cleaning than burning now. It was Halloween in the city. Children were everywhere. I was cleaning. Every now and then a few would wander into the hotel lobby, disrupt the peace, and wander around aimlessly saying “Trick-or-Treat” with their little candy sacks open until someone gave them something they wanted. The woman behind the lobby desk was the one to go pester and would let them have their pick, she knew child psychology unlike me. This was the night until curfew.

I had made my way to the upstairs hallways tiptoeing around like always and trying my best not to disturb the customers from what ever they were doing. It was already midnight when I finished. The hotel was just another one of those places I had to clean for work every two days. I packed up, as usual, and began heading back down to the lobby to leave to my next small job before I was let to go home and sleep. I was halfway down the stairs when something odd smelling hit me, something I had never smelled before. It seemed the woman wasn’t smart enough when I look back on it.

Everything was everywhere. The floor was covered and two lifeless bodies now lay on it. The third wasn’t recognizable except for the hotel uniform that feebly clung to her form in shreds. Sure I was shocked beyond belief and sure the first thing that ran through my mind was that this was a terrible Halloween prank and that I was going to have a hell of a time getting all that fake blood out of the carpets. However on further inspection I noticed that none of these were stage props. From the blood to the black goo that was spilling out of the heads of, what we call now, Z’s. They were still barely warm with life.

There wasn’t much that I could do from then on and feared going outside into the dark and risk getting torn up like that poor lobby woman. In shock and thinking of only one thing I snagged a key from the keyboard, bolted up the stairs, and shut myself away. That’s where they found me about three weeks later. Living off what scraps of nutrition that were stocked in the rooms when they found me; I was practically bones. I couldn’t walk.

Lifted into the arms of a Corpse Corps solider I don’t think I’ve ever felt any safer in my life. I had seen what happened in those streets below, my damn curious nature took the better of me and it was only natural to peek out. After the third mauling I began to loose hope and as I drifted off in that man’s arms I was grateful but tormented with nightmares. Arriving at the airport was probably one of the best and yet worst things that could have happened to me.

I had to open my big mouth when they asked me what I had done for a living before all this and I’m still kicking myself for not lying. What more can you do with a woman that was a cleaner and has already been exposed to death? Make her run the incinerators…beautiful. You know how they say the longer you’re in one area that smells like something foul the more you get used to it? Not everything can be gotten used to. My crew that runs the incinerators really do need our own badges and in my own opinion they should read: Limbs, Clothes, Everything.

We place bets to pass the time some days, we try to joke about it to make the work lighter. With all the people cramped into the airport it’s quite natural to want to cut down the population for bigger ration portions, right? We aim for high numbers. Every now and then we’d get an overflow and a whole new shipment of Z’s, decapitated and fresh off the streets for grilling. Apparently they think burning them is less harmless to the environment than letting them sit and decay. I sure as hell think it’s a cleaner way of going about the situation. Either way we’d get a corpse we thought was human until we burned it, you can really tell that way. After all there is a strange spice to Z’s that I have yet to figure out.

No doubt there always has to be a few people that disagree with our jokes, we have them. Being a body burner takes some strength and stomach. It hardly effects me to know that I’m throwing someone’s loved one into the flames. I try not to communicate with anyone outside my crew so I don’t grow attachments and later guilty if they have to meet flames by my hands. Morbid as it may seem I’m numb to the feeling of lifeless bodies in my hands. I live a pretty solitary life. You’re just the lucky one to be able to hold me up for as long as possible. The only one outside my crew that knows my story thus far. After all we’re just a humble crew of modern day cremators with our noses in the ashes, fingers blackened with suet.