The New Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

clouds and disappear or turn into rain or whatever. Maybe everyone goes on to eternal suffering more horrible than anything we can imagine. No way to tell, but all those assholes imagined they had angels and harps and heavenly choirs sewn up, and that’s what opened the door for all this. Soul photography was in 1973, and by 1975 the first-generation reanimates began appearing on the market.’
     
    ‘I always wondered about that,’ I said. ‘It only took them two years to figure out how to turn dead people into product.’
     
    ‘That’s because they already knew. Here’s what they don’t teach you in Sunday school: the technique was actually developed by the Nazis during World War II. They were plotting some huge offensive in which they would overwhelm the Allies with an army of the dead, but fortunately the war ended before they had a chance. Americans had the secret for years but knew they could never do anything with it, that the public would flip out. But after the soul photography began, they saw an opening. Christ, do you have any idea how much money the government has made by licensing the procedure? And then there are all the regulations, you know?’
     
    ‘The regulations,’ I echoed. ‘What was that, like the Alabama Accord or something?’
     
    ‘The Atlanta Convention - a big meeting between industry and government to set the ground rules. When you buy a reanimate from one of the Big Three, they’ll warn you never to remove the mask, that it messes up the preservative process, and I think just about everyone obeys. No one wants their reanimate to fall apart on them. And then there are the quarterly servicings. If you miss even one of them, your reanimate becomes unlicensed and can be confiscated by the cops.’
     
    Ryan was also very interested in where the reanimates come from. ‘They pay you, like, what? Seven or eight thousand to sign up, but not a whole lot of people in this country are willing to sell their bodies for eternal slavery, so most of the reanimates come from Africa or Asia. I always thought that was one of the reasons for the masks and the uniforms. I think a lot of white Americans might be more uncomfortable if they had to stare into a black reanimate face. More zombie- ish, I guess.’
     
    ‘So where do these come from?’ I asked. Most of the strippers at the club were young white women.
     
    Ryan shrugged. ‘Some are from Eastern Europe, though those are hard to get because you need ones that spoke English when they were alive. Still, you have any idea how many poor assholes in Latvia are trying to learn En - glish just so they can sell their bodies? But the Americans? They’re drug addicts, people with terminal diseases who want something for their families, whatever. A lot of them sell their bodies on the black market. They get less, but there are no taxes. Some young hottie gets pregnant and can’t afford an abortion? Maybe she hocks her body, hoping to buy it back. That’s the teaser, you know. You can always buy it back. How many reanimates out there do you think were convinced they could get their bodies out of hock before they died? Even the black- market dealers let you do it, because they know people can convince themselves that they’ll be able to redeem their bodies. Almost no one ever does.’
     
    I wondered if that was what happened to Maisie Harper - some crisis she couldn’t tell her parents about, so she pawned her body, sure she would have time to buy it back.
     
    ‘Bunch of morons,’ Ryan said. ‘Convince yourself of anything. It’s crazy to think that because some chick believed she would always have more time, you can walk in here and just fucking buy her like you would buy a loaf of bread.’
     
    Until that moment, I’d had no idea you could buy a reanimate from the Pine Box. This changed everything. ‘You mean I could - a person could - buy one of these girls?’
     
    ‘You thinking about it? Be hard to explain to your wife, but yeah. I