This is from an ongoing web-serial… or in this case, web-zerial. Start from Chapter One below, or if you know the story, carry on shuffling!

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I don’t sleep. None of us do. But sometimes, when it gets dark, we just stop. Lean against walls and freeze in place. It’s not rest—it’s a habit. I used to do it, too, back when we had the city to ourselves. But now, there’s too much to watch for.

There are various reasons why we have to move. The first round of issues is that the margins of society move in. The real homeless and the real people with problems. Most of them are so focused on escaping with alcohol and cooked-up chemicals that they don’t worry about us. But the ones that are just down and out do.

They watch us when we don’t know it. Realise that a lot of us just walk in circles. That we groan to each other for days without eating or really moving. Unknown to them, we are having a deep conversation about who would win in a fight: Bear-man or Shark-man. But all they hear are just the moans of debate, not the actual debate itself. Perhaps if they heard what we were talking about, they probably wouldn’t be scared. They wouldn’t be worried.

In case you’re wondering—it’s Bear-man. Shark-man wouldn’t be able to breathe out of water. Obviously. Unless it was the bottom half of him that was a shark. Then, OK, sure, he could breathe, but he couldn’t stand because of the tail. Anyway, the bottom end of a shark is so boring. He would look more like a walrus than a shark. All the cool powers of a shark are in his face. That’s what you would want.

It’s like when you are a kid, and you hear a weird noise. If you knew it was just the tap in the bathroom dripping or the branch scraping against the plastic gutter, you would be fine. Hell, even if there was a monster in the cupboard grumbling, if you knew all he was grumbling about was how disgusting humans are because some of them combine condensed milk and peanut butter together on bread, you wouldn’t worry about the monster.

You wouldn’t pipe in that you thought it was pretty disgusting as well. That you knew a guy at school who mixed sardines and jam. Then, join the monsters to attack the disgusting humans with horrible taste combinations— the condensed milk and peanut butter ones. Leave the rest alone. Or maybe just cyclists because they are annoying as hell. Why do they never just use the cycle lane? Why do they insist on using the road? I mean, I don’t even drive, and I find it annoying. It’s such a simple rule. Why do humans struggle with simple rules?

Since we don’t sleep or eat, we can sometimes get caught up in these discussions for hours, days, and weeks without doing anything else. Most humans wouldn’t notice. But if you were sleeping in a tent, under a bridge, on a hard floor, you were not exactly going to be sleeping heavily. Any small noise will wake you up, and while I personally find groans and grunts soothing, it is the kind of thing a person who has nothing to do but sleep in a tent would notice.

Once the real humans moved into our space with their tents and their booze, they lit fires in large metal barrels, which signals the other humans to move in. Then, there are the volunteers and the social workers. For a while, it seemed pleasant because they gave us stuff, which was nice. But then they want something in return—our name, maybe what we did before. Either way, we can’t really answer. We merely gurgle and groan, odd sounds. Our mouths were dehydrated by lack of moisture years ago.

They get concerned because our wounds don’t heal. They keep handing us antibiotics and looking at each other nervously. We smell funny, and then they get pushy about being clean. This is the red flag that we must leave.

Many, many years ago, shortly after we woke up, in the very first place we were at, we didn’t move. We stayed, and the helpers got really nosy. Then the police came because some of the real humans had drugs. They did a bust. The real humans scattered, but we don’t move that fast if we don’t have to. They threw some of us in vans. A few days later, those zombies returned. With fresh blood on their shirt. They didn’t want to talk about it, but they said we should move. Urgently. And so we did. But like a rolling stone, once we started moving, we just never really stopped. It became our thing. Hang out here for a year or two, then we go.

We don’t often kill, but sometimes we have to. To keep the humans quiet. We can’t have witnesses. One year, one of us got shot. A human wanted money or something from us. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the full story, but apparently, we stared at him, and he freaked out because why weren’t we bleeding? He didn’t understand why we were so calm, so he shot bullet after bullet into our bodies. It took us two days to hunt him down. He was trembling by the time we got to him. Petrified. He knew who we were.

My dog tags tinkled under my shirt. I guess at some point, my name had been on the metal. Standard military-stamp style. But over time, the metal has worn down. Years of being washed with rain and dried by the sun. The name doesn’t matter, but what it is does. It reminds me that I stand for something. That I can’t let myself go. Order must be maintained even through chaos.

I wish I could remember more. More of who I was as a full person, not just a walking corpse. I feel like if we could pull it together and maybe try to be more of what we used to be, that we would be better for it. If we were more organised, we could make a safe place. Organise a life. We could even travel, couriering ourselves across the globe. All we would need would be an address to send ourselves to.

I tell Nee this at the start of the day. He’s wrapping duct tape over an old wound he got many years ago. The old duct tape has peeled, so he’s redoing it. The gashes on our skin remind us of what we are. I look away. I don’t want to be reminded. I want to be free. To be part of something.

I feel like we should be doing something more than just hanging out. The Rot and Repair Shop is great, but we need to do more things like that. We should have our own community, our own space. Have something to do. Not just stand around discussing Bear-man fights.

Nee just shrugs at me as he gets up.

“Where do you want to go?”

Where. It’s a good question. A question I’ve been trying to work out. It has to be somewhere where humans aren’t and where we can survive. I’ve thought about places dense with snow, but that would quicken our journey to the Drift. I’ve thought about underwater, but once again, our flesh would quickly decay. Where?

Nee nods to me. We have to get going. It’s going to be light soon. We are going to go and check how close the regular humans are to us now. They keep fixing up old neighbourhoods and making them trendy again. Gentrification is what they call it. Bloody annoying is what we call it. Somehow, I doubt our name for it will ever catch on.

We amble from the highway toward the city. We’re a little slow, but it’s not too bad. We soon pass the homeless humans. They give us a weary eye. I look at Nee. He’s filthy—it hasn’t rained in a while. I probably don’t look great either. I nod at them as gracefully as I can. We aren’t threats, and they are right to be somewhat concerned about us.

I try to make my stiff walk more relaxed, and Nee does the same. The pavement changes as we walk—cracked and stained concrete gives way to smooth concrete slabs. The air smells cleaner, like freshly watered plants instead of burnt trash. Even the shadows feel sharper under the unbroken street lights.

A car pulls up quietly, and a man gets out in clean chinos and a white collared shirt. The electric cars are practically silent compared to the old petrol ones. If we had heard him, we would have already sulked away, but the speed and silence catch us out in the open. He looks at us. We sort of work our way into a corner of a building and attempt to hide in the shadows. Disgust crosses his face.

“You can’t stay here!” He shouts at us.

We nodded.

“This is a family neighbourhood,” he continues. He takes one step away from his car and then stops with a look of guilt. We haven’t protested or challenged him. It makes him feel bad for being so aggressive. He takes a step back and looks at us again.

“There’s a soup kitchen three blocks over. You can get help there,” he shouts. There. That was his forward kindness of the day. Something he can write about in his gratitude journal. Hopefully, we can continue once he leaves.

He turns and opens the back of his car. There, he pulls out a bunch of flyers from a box and starts to make his way up some nearby stairs into a building. One of the flyers floats out as he walks and lands in the gutter.

I shuffle over to it, pick it up, and turn it over in my hands. “Urban Renewal Initiative” was written in big red letters. The flyer showed a glossy photo of a restored brownstone building with flower boxes and smiling humans. Underneath it, I spotted a crumbling building I knew too well—the one Kaa and I passed every morning. They’re coming for us. We have to warn the others. We have to devise a plan for where we will move to. There could be no more debate. The time has arrived for us to make a decision. We need a long-term strategy.

I heard more humans coming and turned back to the door the man had walked into. He was now coming out, laughing with a woman. They stopped at the top of the stairs and were looking down at us. They both noticed me and the flyer I held in my hands.

“You read that?” the man shouted at me. “You lot best clear out. We will be clearing out the whole area soon. Renovate the buildings, make it look habitable again. So don’t even think of moving from wherever you came from to here.”

“We should spread awareness,” the woman said, and the guy nodded.

“Great idea, Susan,” he said and pulled his phone out. She took it and put the camera on to record himself, then passed it to Susan.

“Heya, boys, girls, and the non-binary baddies! It’s Stevie here from the Home Association from the new and trendy Collective suburb. Can I hear a hey-yaa! Just a quick update around those that are maybe house-challenged, like my friend here…”

With that, Stevie looked at Nee and me and then popped his arm around my shoulders, concluding that I was a little cleaner. His arm had no weight and merely hovered above my shoulders. I looked up at his face.

“So, what you are going to want to do is just give our houseless friends a little guidance and gently remind them about the soup kitchen a few blocks over on 5th Ave. It’s not far, so don’t worry. There, they will get free food and shower opportunities and even find solutions for areas of growth prospects, like jobs and permanent accommodation.

“On to some other news, I just got news from my friend Susan this morning that we got the clearance and go-ahead to do the next phase of our renovation. Which means my peeps, my queens, my trend-setters—Mindful Meadows is happening, people! We will slowly be transforming and upcycling our way towards the railways, one brick at a time!

“Anyway, keep slaying everyone, and I’ll chat to y-all later!”

I looked at the direction he was pointing when he spoke about building the next suburb. It was right in the direction of where we lived. I turned to Nee. His expression darkened. I wandered off, leaving ‘Stevie’s arm to simply fall. He had grabbed the phone from Susan and was now focusing on editing and adding the latest pop song to his video.

“Hey!” I heard him shout. “I wasn’t kidding, hey. You guys need to move out of here.”

“Vagrants,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I thought we had removed the lot of them, and then these two show up.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Susan. When the police and social workers do their sweep, we’ll make sure they do this area again as well.”

“That would be amazing, Stevie. Thank you. You know, since the kids left for crèche, it’s just me on my own. I don’t want to have to worry about safety, you know?”

“Yes, yes. You don’t have to worry about a thing. And you have my number, right? You see anything, or even these two, you let me know, yeah? You have been such a darling client for me, and I have no trouble going the extra mile for my special clients.”

“You are a real gem, Stevie, looking after me like that. I will definitely keep your number near, if I see this lot again.”

She was gesturing towards me again. A man who once fought in a war to keep her safe, and now here I was before her. She had no idea of what I was. I could have been a human who badly needed a shower and a job opportunity to become part of society again, but instead, she was choosing to talk to me like I was nothing more than a floating plastic bag in the wind—non-degradable and annoying.

“Disgusting,” Susan said.

If I had any breath in me, I would have sighed it out. If I could heal, I would have punched the lot of them in the face. But lucky for them, I have neither.

It’s not only the obvious way they treat us that annoys me. It’s not even that they don’t see us for what we are or assume we are something we aren’t. It’s that they don’t know. They don’t remember. These adults were merely children, or babies, or just chromosomes that hadn’t even been flung together yet, when I was alive. They don’t remember the hatred, the past, the war. They just know they are fresh adults, and everything around them looks like shit. So they fixed it. It’s the fixing generation. And therefore the aesthetic generation. It’s all about looks.

But we can’t play that game. History hangs over us, suffocating us. We can’t breathe new life into anything, yet we are discovered, so we just live in the decay of the city and the decay of our skin.

Humans think fixing up a neighbourhood means planting trees and painting over the cracks. They don’t see what’s still broken underneath. They can build all the coffee shops they want, but they’ll never really know what it’s like to be stuck, rotting, with no way out.

I need to get these dark thoughts out. I need space. I shuffle back to Nee and get back to the others. I shove the pamphlet into my back pocket.

“We have to go,” I groaned.

“But where?” he asked.

I shrugged. Nee was on the same page as me. We need to find a solution. Far, far away.