[ WP ] The zombie apocalypse is over , and zombie-ism has been `` cured '' . That is to say , they have regained their sentience . Now , they remain in their own sections , left alone by humanity . You are the only human that goes in to get their stories .

Even now, the records can ’ t quite be trusted to have counted everyone, but as of last year there are only about half a billion of us Living left. The other sentient species inhabiting Earth are the Returned, those zombies who had managed to survive, more or less, whole and intact. They regained their sentience, while the rest either perished on their own for being too weak or damaged, or were exterminated by us. 
 
 Their creation wasn ’ t chemical or magic, technically we don ’ t know how they were created, but it changed something about our home planet Earth. That change made it necessary for our two species to live and work together. That didn ’ t mean living together was easy. The Returned did kill ninety percent of our species. Not only that, but they were born of us. Our family and friends. Now something completely different. 
 
 But I am getting off the topic at hand. You ask me why I go to the Returned ’ s sector beside Becklan ’ s Park, unafraid of having the stigma of being a Returned Sympathizer, or worse. First and foremost, I am not a lover of the Returned. Just the thought of being caressed by their rotting skin, or smelling death on them, makes my stomach churn. 
 
 When I was ten years old, the Extermination Squads were still very much active. The Treaty of Humus was being negotiated, but it was still a couple years away. I was living with a small community of adults with my mother in the southern quadrant of Old Cyan, a gated but loosely patrolled settlement. I knew when and where the patrols came from and went, just as I knew where there was a weak spot in the gate—an overlooked piece of Wildlands close to the southeastern corner. I would leave the settlement and wander close by, only on that afternoon I felt particularly adventurous, so I went and explored the ruins of a truck stop. It had been damaged by both gunfire and fire, and was thus unstable. 
 
 A section of the roof fell in on top of me, both breaking my left leg and pinning me there. I was trapped for a day before I was found by a helpful Returned named Zed—not the colloquial term for zombie or the letter, but a character in a series of books he read in his youth by Terry Goodkind. I only realized he was a Returned after he freed me and started bandaging my leg. It was the smell. Sweet and sickly. Rotting meat. You see, he was perfectly intact. He ‘ died ’ the year of my birth after being bitten on the ankle by an unseen crawler in tall grass. 
 
 Anyways, he knew I would die if I didn ’ t get help. He also knew I couldn ’ t get home on my own, but going to the settlement would probably mean his own permanent death. Instead of leaving me there to die, or even turning me, he carried me home. They didn ’ t kill him and he vanished, never to be seen again. 
 That experience and the new treaty allowed me to have a bit more of an open mind than everyone around me, even my own family. While technically, the treaty said that humans could go into their sections of the city and them into ours, that barely happened. The Living hardly ever went into their sector and the only time the Returned came into ours was for government business, or when the Living police needed a ‘ blood hound ’. So, curious, I went into their sector when I was eighteen. 
 
 I was greeted by complete strangers by name! Zed was the only Returned who knew that I existed. It was impossible that these peo—Returned—knew who I was. I learned very quickly they hardly every spoke to each other. Actually, they don ’ t physically talk when the Living aren ’ t around. They talked to each other telepathically. After a few weeks of sneaking in, I learned they were a sort of pseudo-hive mind. If one of them knew quantum physics before they died, all of them know quantum physics. 
 
 I wanted to know what else they could do, and so my education started. I chose to become a sociologist of the Returned as a disguise to mask my personal fascination with them. That afforded me some leeway in not being labelled a freak, a Returned Sympathizer, or a necrophile. 
 
 After I ‘ graduated ’ I got permission to do a longitudinal study of the Returned, their new culture, social values, and of course their version of the social contract. While I was there, I made notes based on observation and real testimony from the Returned, but I real job was to gain their trust and find out what else they could do we didn ’ t know about. 
 
 They finally told me what they had told only a very few humans: they were created by the Earth Herself, not as a punishment for ruining the environment, population control, or anything as pedantic as that, but because it was necessary. She could see her impending death, but knew it could be avoided. The problem was us: we were not nearly advanced enough to help her. In a couple hundred years? Sure, but she—and us—would be long dead. She needed a hive mind that could think about the problem and come up with a solution fast. But creating a sentient species took hundreds of thousands to millions of years. So, she did the next best thing: she created the Returned. They would spread their ‘ disease ’, become part of an incredibly powerful hive-mind machine, and save her. 
 
 I see it in your eyes. That question. The only question that really matters: you want to know “ what about us ”? I don ’ t know. Neither do they. I think only Mother Earth knows the answer to that question. 

