Free Zombies Don't Cry by Brian Stableford

forever, if I’m careful enough and lucky enough, but I’m damned if I can see any reason why I shouldn’t make the absolute best of myself for as long as superhumanly possible. The living can throw in the towel if they want to, and just let getting older take its course, but we needn’t, and we shouldn’t, no matter where or when we start from. We can get fit, no matter what age of death we started from, and we can stay fit…even if we’re as old as Methuselah, let alone sixty-one. You see what I’m getting at, don’t you, Son? We don’t even know what we might be capable of yet, physically speaking, so we have to do our damnedest to push ourselves. We have to exercise—we have to dance.
    “You get my point, don’t you, Nicky. You understand why I’m doing this for the group?”
    “Yes I do,” I told him.
    “And you see the logic of the hard-driving beat? You see why we need to stomp as hard as we can, and get the rhythm pounding in our chests, instead of prancing around to pretty music?”
    “I’m not entirely sure that the words of Highway to Hell convey the right message,” I opined, mildly, “but I see what you mean.”
    “It’s a Classic,” he said, with an injured frown. “The words are ironic.”
    “And I appreciate the irony,” I assured him.
    Once I was free again, Dr. Hazelhurst sidled up to me and whispered: “Teacher’s pet.” He had turned up five minutes after rockmobility was due to finish, although nobody had actually lasted the full two hours except Stan himself, and even Stan wasn’t crazy enough to carry on stomping on his own. The chairs had already been spread out, and the beneficiaries of Stan’s crude physiotherapy were slumped in them, making a gradual recovery.
    “I’m just the new guy,” I said. “It’s kind of him to take the trouble to explain. Do you come here often?”
    “Oh yes,” he said. “Three or four times a week, at least. Research.”
    “Research?” I queried.
    “Unfunded research,” he amplified, proudly. “On my own time.”
    “Very impressive,” I commented, as that seemed to be what he was fishing for.
    “Oh, it’s not because I’m possessed by a spirit of generosity,” he hastened to add, obviously feeling that false modesty was likely to go over better than false arrogance. “I’m doing it because it’s a good career move. The lack of official funding lessens the competition, and the field’s wide open, as I told you back at the Berks. I’m limited, of course, in the kinds of research I can do—access to equipment and all that—but simply having a sample available, at this stage of the game, is invaluable. It’s too small as yet to be really useful—Reading’s quite a small town, geographically speaking—but as it grows…anyway, I’m hoping to add you to my roster of volunteers. You’d be invaluable.”
    “All guinea-pigs are equal,” I told him. “I can’t possibly be any more invaluable than anyone else, so flattery will get you nowhere. What’s in it for me, if you’re the one who gets to be famous if and when you find something interesting?”
    “Come on, Nicky—you’re a smart fellow, even if you do only have a degree in English Lit. You know perfectly well that every afterliving individual has an interest in the speed of discovery being cranked up to the max. The more we know about afterlife, the better-placed the afterliving will be to make all the crucial decisions in afterlife…and the cleverer the Resurrection Men will become in saving people from permanent death, before and after.” He meant that not only would Burkers be able to zombify more dead people, but that they’d become better able to preserve the zombified from whatever it was zombies did instead of dying, if they were careless enough to fall victim to nasty accidents.
    “I’m flattered that you bothered to look up my educational qualifications,” I told him. “I might only have a degree in English Lit, but I’m not stupid enough