By ten a.m., their faces were the color of skim milk. They didn’t have the strength to clamor, but were weakly begging for weed. I finally broke down and went around the corner to see Jeremy, my occasional supplier, the skate-punk kid who lives in a garage on Rope Alley.

“Whoa,” he said, pushing his white-person dreadlocks out of his eyes. “You’re really smoking it up, Zoey.”

“I have houseguests.”

“Oh yeah?” His eyes opened a little. “Female houseguests?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. I was out the door with my new stash of weed before he had a chance to ask more.

I got the ladies good and stoned, and they did appear plumper and pinker after smoking. Then it was nearly noon and I had to go to one of my odd jobs, teaching yoga to developmentally disabled adults.

I changed into yoga pants and a tank top then washed my face and hands so I wouldn’t reek of pot. I hadn’t even smoked, but the zombies had exhaled all over me.

“You guys please stay inside the apartment and don’t let anyone in. You can watch TV,” I said, flicking on the television, which had initially scared the hell out of them, but now seemed to soothe them.

“Okay?” I glared at Annabelle.

She looked up at me, all dreamy and stoned. “Okay.” she said in a faraway voice.

My dog was curled up next to Sophia, who was raptly staring at a talk show hosted by people wearing surgical scrubs.

The rec room where I teach the yoga class smelled like cabbage. Katie, a cheerful sixtyish woman, came bounding in.

“I brought you something!” she said brightly.

It was a dinosaur book. She had given me a dinosaur book the previous week too.

“Thank you, Katie.”

Will, a tall man with a vacant stare, told me his back was hurting and he wanted me to arrange him into a restorative pose. I did.

The class went smoothly until one of the men peed his pants. I had to go find an aide who took him to get changed.

On the way home, I stopped at the coffee store, Swallow, and bought two pounds of coffee. That was another thing. The zombies liked their coffee.

As I let myself back into the apartment, I heard a male voice. My heart sank. Had Sophia gone out and found her friend with the tooth grill and brought him home?

The voices were coming from the kitchen. I walked in and nearly walked back out. What I was seeing was too fucking weird.

Doon, the neuroscientist acquaintance I’d e-mailed the previous night, was sitting across the kitchen table from Sophia, apparently drawing her blood. Doon, as far as I knew, lived in Pennsylvania and was not in possession of my street address.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I came as soon as I got your e-mail,” he said.

“Isn’t that enough blood?” Sophia asked Doon.

I stared at the blood swirling around inside the syringe’s cylinder. It was dark red, like any other blood.

“Almost,” Doon said.

“What are you doing to Sophia?” I was feeling protective.

“Just drawing blood.” Doon finally glanced up at me. “Hi, Zoey.”

“Yeah. Hi,” I said back.

Doon looked exactly as he had four years earlier when I’d helped look after his father: amiable, short brown hair, square jaw, deep-set black eyes, tidy clothing.

He started pumping the ladies for information. “What do you remember?” He was drooling in his eagerness to learn more about them.

Sophia was shaking her head, clearly not remembering anything, and Annabelle couldn’t do much better, her earliest memory of her new life going back only as far as awakening inside her coffin as it was being split apart by the earth-moving machine.

“What are you going to test their blood for?” I asked.

“Anything that deviates from the norm,” Doon said. “Ditto with their genetic material.” He pointed at a kit containing giant Q-tips and glass slides.

I didn’t like it. But the zombies were going along with it all. Presumably they were as eager as Doon to understand what they were.

It wasn’t until he’d taken off, nearly two hours later, that I discovered Doon had given the ladies the creeps.

“The minute you left the room he asked questions that had nothing to do with being dead,” Birdie said. “Questions about life as a hooker. Dirty, nasty stuff.”

Birdie was about as prudish as an undead hooker could be. Even one from 1924.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Can we smoke now?” Sophia asked. “I don’t feel well.”

“Did you tell Doon that weed makes you feel better?”

“No,” Birdie answered. “You said it’s illegal.”

“Right,” I said.

I handed over my bag of weed.

My phone chirped early the next morning.

“Zoey,” Doon said, “I’m assembling a team and we’re coming up there. Your friends are most certainly over a hundred years old!”

“Really?” I mustered. I hadn’t had coffee yet.

“Really. We will be up this afternoon. And we’ll take over.”

“Take over? We?”

“We’re going to take your friends to the lab at Penn State.”

“The lab? They’re not rats, Doon. Not that rats should be in a lab either. But these are people. Or … something.”

“We’ll treat them respectfully and give them comfortable accommodations.”

“What if they don’t want to go?”

“What else are they going to do? Live on your couch forever?”

“I don’t know, Doon, but I’m not sure they want to be experimented on.”

“Zoey, this could be huge. If we can figure out what brought them back to life and what is sustaining their lives, well, imagine the implications!”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’ll see you later,” Doon said, hanging up before I could protest.

I stared at my phone.

Alexander Vinokourov lifted his head, sniffed the air, then looked at me.

“They want to take them away,” I said.

Vino blinked.

I tiptoed into the living room. They were still sleeping. I went into the kitchen, fed Vino, and put coffee on. Eventually, Birdie came into the kitchen and I offered her a few spoonfuls of Vino’s meat.

She seemed surprised at my generosity.

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“What are you talking about? I’m always nice to you. I’m giving you shelter, food, clothes, and pot. What else do you want, a fucking kidney?”

“Kidney?” Birdie tilted her head.

Sophia and Annabelle made their way into the kitchen and started hovering. I waited till they’d gotten some coffee down then told them about Doon’s plans for them.

“Pennsylvania?” Annabelle said, wrinkling her nose. “I was born there. I have no wish to return. Not even ninety-five years later.”

“Does he think we’re like Frankenstein or something? How horrible of him,” Birdie said.

“Would we make money?” Sophia asked.

“It’s possible.”

“Would we go on TV?” Sophia pointed at the television set.

“Maybe,” I shrugged.

“Really?” Sophia’s eyes widened.

“Sophia, we do not wish to be put on display like zoo animals,” Birdie said.

“We don’t?” Sophia squinted.

“We don’t,” Annabelle said.

“Where can we go?” Birdie asked.

“Go?” I said.

“I don’t want to be experimented on. If we stay here, they will come for us.”

Birdie was right. But where could they go? They’d only been living in the twenty-first century for forty-eight hours. I couldn’t very well send them to, say, Maine, or New Jersey, and expect them to blend in, never mind survive.

“What do you know about Wyoming?” I asked.

“Like your wallet?” Sophia pointed at my weed-stash wallet open on the coffee table.

“Like the state out west,” I said.

“Cowboys?” Annabelle asked.

“Sort of,” I said. “I think nowadays the cowboys drive pickup trucks and wear helmets. The West isn’t that wild anymore, but nothing really is.”

All three looked at me blankly.

“Well?” I said.

“What would we do when we got there? We have no money, no nothing,” said Birdie.