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I saw some of the female trainees over on their side of the camp. They were standing in a straggling line, listening to a lecture from a very tall woman sergeant in a black leather jacket with death’s heads on the collars, and high jackboots. The sergeant’s voice shrilled faintly to me through the evening air.

"I’m told she used to be an actress specialising in Nazi concentration camp films," someone said. I looked around. It was one of the other trainees. "She used to act as an SS member, of course. Looks like she took the role to heart." He mimed a pumping action with his fist, over the gaping hole in the centre of his chest. I looked away from him and back at the woman sergeant. She had stopped yelling, had turned her head and was staring at us.

"Look away," my friend the trainee said. "It’s always better not to attract their attention." Without any further word, he scuttled away, listing heavily to one side.

I walked away, and just before entering the barrack that had I had been allotted to, I looked round. The tall woman sergeant was still watching me.

That night I had a visitor. I had just finished scrubbing my teeth with earth to try and blacken them when I was grabbed by the shoulder and turned around. It was one of the camp guards, almost two metres tall and broad to match.

"You," he said. "Your name is?"

I told him my newly-issued zombie name.

"That’s the one," he said over his shoulder, where another of the guards was hulking, and turned back to me. "Come."

"Where?"

Of course he didn’t answer me. Still holding me by the arm, he dragged me along so quickly that I had to trot not to fall over on my face. We walked across the parade ground, out through the main gate, and to my astonishment we entered the camp again, on the women’s side.

They dragged me right to a small cabin set against the perimeter wall, opened the door, literally threw me in and slammed the door behind me. As I lay on the floor in the darkness, I could hear them walking away.

It was very dark in the cabin, and very silent, but for some reason I felt I wasn’t alone. By force of habit, I listened for the sound of breathing until I remembered that I wouldn’t hear any since we zombies didn’t breathe. As quietly as possible, I began to get up.

There was a soft scratching noise and a matchstick flickered in one corner of the cabin. A moment later, two large candles were burning in a stand on a table in the corner.

"Come here."

She was even taller than I’d thought from across the parade ground, comfortably topping me in her bare feet. She wore nothing except a nasty gleam in her eyes. Or maybe it was just the candlelight.

It wasn’t just the candlelight. "You were watching me today," she said. "Fancy me, do you?"

"Er," I said. "No, sergeant."

"What? You don’t fancy me? You don’t think I look good?" She beckoned with a long-nailed forefinger. "Come closer and answer me. Am I pretty, or aren’t I?"

"Yes, sergeant," I said, edging reluctantly towards her. The look of her would have made my testicles retract protectively, if I’d still possessed testicles.

"I’m pretty, but you don’t fancy me? Are you gay or something?"

"Oh, no, sergeant. I’m not gay."

"Prove it, then," she said, thrusting her one remaining breast at me. "Do me and prove it. That’s an order."

"Um, I can’t." I indicated my missing genitalia. "I lost them when I got zombiefied."

"Yeah?" She reached out, pulled down my trousers, and peered at my nether regions. "Well, that won’t let you off the hook. You’ve got a mouth, haven’t you? Hands? So get to work. Now."

The patch of hair between her thighs looked as though it might harbour a whole menagerie of creepy-crawlies. When she sat down on the table and spread her legs wide apart, it stank like rotten fish.

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