A zombie, I thought, subvocalizing a word that I’d been avoiding for some time. Shreds of former clothing still draped the cadaverous form, grinning liplessly as it cast about, left and right, searching for something it had lost. It never occurred to the wretched thing – thank God – to look up.

“S’cuse me,” Moulder said, in an amused voice. “I think you’ve got something our cousin wants back.”

As he crouched by my side, I looked down and must have yelped. The woman, Sully, steadied me as Moulder wrestled loose a severed hand that still clamped ahold of my service boot. With a grunting effort, he loosened its grip, holding it warily by the wrist as it slowly writhed, opening and closing clumsily.

“Hey, cuz! Here ya go. Wear it in health!”

He tossed the disembodied appendage down so that it struck the zombie in the chest. After a moment or two, the pathetic, horrible thing bent over to recover the member, fumbling and finally managing to re-attach the hand in some way. Backwards, I realized when it clenched. The poor creature didn’t seem to notice.

“Flshsh-shfleppp-ph-ph gr-gr-flph-ph-f,” it slobbered through a rictus grin… and I swear, the slavering sound seemed almost musical, in a strange, chilling way. I wouldn’t have expected my nanos to make sense of the noise, but the translator in my left ear offered a best-guess interpretation—

“Why thank you, kids, for finding what I had misplaced! How nice to see that courtesy is still extant among today’s youth.”

It was only a rough rendering. The original statement might have been bitterly sarcastic for all I knew. Still, I muttered, “You’re welcome,” almost involuntarily, as the corpambulist shuffled off to join a horde of risen forms, now shambling in unison through the gloom.

“Have a nice evening stroll,” I added.

The woman, Sully, let go of my arm and stared at me. I turned, and abruptly realized something I’d been too tense no notice before – that she was, without a doubt, the loveliest dead person who ever saved my life. To her surprised regard, I could only shrug and repeat what my own instructors used to teach, here at the academy, as good advice for any occasion.

“Well after all,” I told the beautiful zombie. “It never hurts a body to be polite.”

Sully and Moulder led me to a mausoleum at the far end of the cemetery, where tombs apparently pre-dated the present era of decline in both population and wealth. Lavish marble masonry faced the vaults and sepulchers, adorned with kneeling statuary figures in prayerful poses. On Earth, such postures usually illustrated earnest supplication for an afterlife. But I tried to shuck aside any preconceptions. Clearly, to the denizens of 1265 Oxytoxin 41-C, “death” was just another phase in a rather complex cycle.