The dead were meant to stay that way.
This was the first and foremost rule that the universe took care without anyone having to write it down.
Until one night, it stopped working.
*******
Elijah Sterling had been a morgue intern for exactly six months.
He was still in the process of learning the anatomy well enough to know which veins were the first to cut, which tools to trust, and how to control his shaking hands when he had to make the first cut on a corpse that had already officially been declared dead.
He really hated the night shift.
The fluorescent lights made everything look worse. The whole place felt even colder under those lights, like he was already halfway to being a corpse himself.
Tonight, he was alone.
Dr. Harper had called in sick. The other senior pathologist was dealing with the overflow at County General. There was some mass casualty incident, details unclear.
That left Eli, six months of experience, standing over his first solo autopsy.
A man in his late fifties suffered a heart attack and was brought in dead on arrival three hours ago.
It was the exact type of corpse he would prefer to practice on without freaking out.
'You can do this. It's just meat. Organized meat,' Eli told himself as he held the scalpel tightly.
He positioned the blade over the sternum, his hands steadier than he expected.
That's when the lights flickered.
Eli paused, holding the scalpel in the air. The fluorescent lights flickered, fading and then shining brightly again in a slow and uneven rhythm.
"Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me," he muttered, pulling the scalpel away.
The building was old, and the electrical wiring below was probably in a very bad condition, only supported by duct tape. Power outages weren't uncommon, but the timing…
He waited a moment to see if the power cut would continue or he would be able to operate quietly.
"Just get the damn thing on already," he cursed softly.
He was not really expecting the lights to come on. He was just trying to calm his mind and make up a good reason for not losing his temper.
The lights stabilized.
"Okay. Let's just—"
The body twitched a little.
It was subtle. A spasm in the left hand, its fingers curling slightly inward.
Eli stepped back, nearly dropping the scalpel.
'It's possibly a post mortem relaxation…' his brain tried to reason.
Except, he knew that wasn't what it was.
The chest rose.
Not just a quick intake of air, but a deep, intentional breath.
"No," Eli whispered. "No, that's not—"
He looked at the heart monitor. It showed a flat line.
The EKG leads still connected to the cold skin indicated there was no electrical activity. There was no pulse. This man had been clinically dead for three hours.
Yet, the chest began to rise and fall again. It rose. It fell.
The hand twitched once more, this time more vigorously, causing the arm to slip off the table with a dull thud.
Eli felt his throat tighten. He couldn't breathe or think clearly. All medical explanations he struggled hard to memorize vanished.
The thermometer in the morgue showed a temperature of 40°F, and his breath formed a mist in the chilly air.
However, the body was moving.
The lights flickered again, this time for a longer duration, leaving the room almost completely dark until the emergency lights activated.
The faint red exit signs illuminated the space with an eerie glow.
In that red light, Eli noticed something distinctly.
The corpse's chest was glowing.
A soft blue glow pulsed in sync with those strange breaths, spreading through the veins like ink dispersing in water, outlining the bony structures beneath the pale skin.
Eli's back hit against the wall as he reached for the door handle.
"... leave. Get out now. HURRY!"
Suddenly, the PA system crackled, releasing a jarring static that made him flinch.
Then a voice, trembling with barely concealed panic, broke through.
"Attention all staff, code black. I repeat, code black. Autonomic failure reversals in ICU, morgue, and ER. Patients with confirmed TOD are regaining motor function."
'Code black? There wasn't a code black…?'
The codes were blue for cardiac arrest, red for fire, and silver for weapons. But code black wasn't written in any training manual he had ever seen.
There was a brief pause, followed by muffled shouting in the background.
The voice returned, now higher and trembling.
"Multiple morgue units reporting… Oh my God, they're sitting up. They're—"
The broadcast abruptly cut to static.
Eli's grip on the door handle was slick with sweat. He couldn't look away from the body.
The corpse's eyes opened, not like waking from slumber.
The lids peeled back with a mechanical motion that revealed milky sclera that glowed with the same blue light coursing through its veins.
The jaw moved soundlessly, once, then twice.
Then the body that had once belonged to a fifty seven year old man sat up.
The movement was smooth and fluid, showing no signs of rigor mortis or stiffness.
It turned his head toward Eli in a way that suggested it was still figuring out how to control its body.
Their eyes met.
"Oh, shit," Eli whispered.
He felt a sudden shift in his perception of reality, as if a crucial belief had shattered like fragile glass.
The emergency door burst open behind him.
He turned around. A nurse staggered in, her face pale and her scrubs stained with blood.
"Don't go out there!" she gasped. "They're everywhere. The trauma bays, the halls. Everyone who died today is…"
A hand gripped Eli's shoulder. It was cold.
He quickly turned around.
The corpse had risen from the stable, standing just inches away, its blue light now pulsing more brighter, spreading to its fingertips.
Its mouth opened, producing a sound that wasn't words, just a deep and rattling moan that vibrated in Eli's bones.
The nurse screamed.
More hands were reaching from the door frame behind her, and more glowing eyes appeared in the hallway.
Eli pushed the corpse backward. It stumbled but didn't fall.
He slammed the morgue door shut, and locked the deadbolt with trembling hands.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Fists pounded against the metal door from both sides.
The nurse was panicking, gripping her hair tightly.
"What's going on?! WHAT IS THIS?!"
"I have no idea!" Eli's voice trembled.
But he couldn't continue, because it was obvious that this was exactly how things were now.
He moved back toward the storage cabinet, his eyes fixed on the door as it shook from the blows.
A strange sensation filled his chest, a pressure building behind sternum, as if something was trying to break free from within.
He looked down.
A faint blue light was starting to shine through his scrubs and skin.
It was the same light blue lights from the corpses.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
Suddenly, the lights went out completely.
In the darkness, the thumping grew louder.
And Eli sensed something vast and unfathomable focusing on him.
His vision narrowed. The pressure in his chest burst outward.
'This can't be how I die…''
Some remote part of his brain thought hysterically.
The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was a voice.
Not from outside, but from within him.
[INITIALIZING…]
Then silence.