Part I

Zack was a zombie and a student of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornle University, but the former detail had gone largely unnoticed by the general population. It would seem that there were in fact many zombies enrolled in this major, though Zack had the uncanny feeling that he was the only one that enjoyed eating human flesh and killing the innocent.

His father was an associate professor in the history department, specializing in ancient roman studies. When professor Benjamin stabbed his son to death for not getting into Harvard senior year of high school, he decided to act quickly. As a frugal individual, he had a clear understanding of how the world works, and how to handle money. After a few hours of going through excel spreadsheets, professor Benjamin decided that instead of having another child and having to pay for that kid’s education all over again, it would be more prudent to bring his stabbed son back from the dead using the ancient roman Syllabine Books. Unfortunately, professor Benjamin was only an associate professor and didn’t have a high enough salary to get a hold of an actual copy of the Syllabine Books. He was, however, able to get a copy of Walmart’s marked down spanish translation.

Professor Benjamin received a copy and kneeling over his son’s corpse, repeated the Spanish phrase that no mortal person would ever utter freely. “Los neoyorquinos hacen mercancías de la calidad.” Zack woke from the dead, but in sub mint condition, so his father decided to send him to Cornle as an Electrical Engineer, where he would fit in.

The whole zombie situation could be taken with a grain of salt. The professor simply didn’t go out at night, and only visited his son after long computer projects, when his body was too weak to do anything short of math. It is true that every fortnight Zack would show up at his father’s office with a student from the law school hanging from his jowls, but they weren’t really people anyway…

Everything was under control until Zack got swine flu. He became terribly sick and had to miss classes for 2 weeks. While his teachers offered him extensions on his homework, they told him they would need to make arrangements to discuss how he would make up the labs. All of his professors worked in the same hallway, but were far too busy to meet each other in person, or to discuss Zack’s situation in great detail. So they held a video conference in which they flipped a coin. Unfortunately, the coin landed on tails, meaning that Zack would not be allowed to make up the labs. Thank god helping out students who had swine flu was only a university “policy”, and not a university policy, (p. 1479. student handbook) or else some one might have blamed them for what happened next.

Evidently, failing those labs had guaranteed that Zack would receive a B- in Computer Design. This was a loss of face which was intolerable to professor Benjamin, so he did what any ivy professor would do in his situation. He marched down to his son’s dorm room and tried to stab him to death. It was only after the knife was fully imbedded in his son’s chest that Professor Benjamin realized that he had been in this situation before, and that nothing clear of a head shot would drag his zombie son back to hell.

As Benjamin was scratching his chin with the knife and pondering where he stashed his compound bow and hunting license, his son woke up. Benjamin got an awful fright, slipped on blood that had been dripping from his knife, and received a minor cut on his right leg. Zack called 911, but when Caiuga Medical’s ambulances arrived 4 hrs later, Professor Benjamin was pronounced dead on arrival.

Zack would have to sleep with his father’s body in the room until the morning, since the city morgue was full for the night. A group of students had decided to take a midnight stroll in downtown Utica after reading the weather report. The website had claimed a ‘breezy 26°F’, when the actual temperature was a crisp -15.

Three days later Zack’s room really began to smell. Apparently, the paramedics who had dealt with professor Benjamin’s death had forgotten to leave themselves a note as a reminder of the rotting corpse in the dorm room, and had completely forgotten about the humdrum event.

Zack couldn’t concentrate on work and decided to go out for a bite to eat.

Part II

Joel Miller was an RA in Zack’s hallway, and was passing by the bathroom when he came across an ungodly smell. At first he thought the smell was coming from one of the inescapable side effect of RPT’s Mardi gras dinning experiences, and considered calling maintenance, but as he continued down the hallway, he realized that it was coming from a freshman’s dorm. Joel had made it a rule of thumb not to talk to freshman, and as a result he was unfamiliar with all of the residents that he was responsible for. When he walked into Zack’s room he was taken aback. One of his freshman was balding. On closer inspection, he was even more taken aback. One of his freshman was dead.

He called the number that Cornle had tattooed to the side of his arm – a policy that had been enacted around the time that Cornle dropped the IQ requirement in the wake of burgeoning RA demand. A cleaning crew arrived in 15 minutes to clean up all the blood, stitch up the puncture wound so that it looked unrelated to the individual’s death, and spray that thing down with Axe to cover up the fact that this thing had gone unnoticed for 3 days. There was some question as to the correct identification of the body, but given the apparent relationship to the Zack’s photo that they had on file, and the fact that part of the face had melted off, the crew was unwilling to work overtime on a hunch.

Zack was pronounced dead, and a letter was sent to his parent’s house notifying them of the incident, and that Cornle’s tuition, meal plan, and housing fees were nonrefundable. A scented candle was included in the package with the inscription, “sorry to hear about your son’s scholarship revoktion, illness, or death.” The scent was bittersweet vanilla, and was acquired through the Hallmark store with a discount for buying in bulk.

Part III

Zack got back to his dorm around midnight. His bedtime snack had been a little stringy, as it had just finished the bar exam.

Zack approached the door to the building with his key card, but the light flashed red. He tried again, but it did not turn green. His access to the dorm building had been revoked. He waited for 15 seconds for someone else to show up, and strolled right on in the building with them. Zack was surprised to find his room cleaned up so well, and had an easy time falling asleep without the smell.

The next day, Zack showed up at the bursar’s office to file a complaint. He waited in line for 30 minutes before being served.

“My card isn’t working any more; I don’t have access to my dorm.” Zack said.

“Let me see” The secretary stalled. “It says that’s because you’re dead.”

“Well I was for a few hours but I came back.” Zack laughed.

“That’s not funny. What you are doing is fraud. Do you know that!?” The secretary claimed.

“I’m obviously not dead, just look at my photo id.” Zack raised his voice.

“It looks like you, but how can I be sure that you didn’t give me a fake ID?”

“Because you’re looking at the picture stored on your computer system right now.” Zack responded dismally.

“Oh” The secretary stumbled.

“Can we hurry this up a bit. I’ve got class, and you are being very unprofessional. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY FATHER’S BODY?” Zack inquired.

“Just calm down. There are many Cornle students in your same exact situation.” The secretary read from the script in front of her.

Zack was pretty sure that at most only a few people could be in his situation, and certainly not ‘many’. “This is like dealing with the DMV.”

He left.

But his Lawyers came back.

But they failed.