Some Zombie Stories, 8: Sometimes kids ask where the zombies come from, and like most everything, nobody actually knows the answer, but unlike most everything, none of us pretend to know the answer. Nobody knows, we tell them. The zombies have always been there, or at least insofar as we can define "always," because we ourselves haven't always been here. And they always will be, we tell our children, without compunction, and also without any evidence to support that hypothesis. We know we ourselves won't always be here, but then we assume things will go on being here today and tomorrow and next week and at Christmas, so I guess it's okay to assume those things will be here next year and next decade and next century. Maybe a lot of things will last until the end of the universe, if it has an end. Maybe some of us will. Maybe some of us will last long enough to see what comes next, after the universe ends,, and to see if the zombies are part of that next thing, too.