In memory of when I cared

In memory of when I cared.

Before everything went to shit I used to care. I cared about a lot of things, actually. I cared about my family and if they had the best life they could possibly have. I cared about animals and the cruel way they were treated for their meat. I cared about the earth and how us humans were defiling and ruining it with our eating habits and technology. I cared about the dying and the sick in countries I've never been to. I cared about the bullied and the depressed.

Now? Now all I care about is getting another fix. And no, I'm not addicted to drugs. I'm way further gone than that. I'm talking about brains.

I'm addicted to brains and human meat like you are probably addicted to "normal" food and water. Being a so-called zombie goes against everything I once believed in: I was a vegetarian, I cared about the earth and other human beings before myself.

Now, I'm first in line for everything. I matter most. Animal meat can keep me alive for a certain period of time, but it doesn't satisfy me. Not like human meat and human brains do. So, I murder people. It's pretty fun, actually. When they see me, they scream and yell at each other, get their guns ready and they shoot.

Bullets don't hurt me. Neither do their knives or machetes. The fire tickles –I like the flamethrowers and Molotov's. They tickle, meaning I can still feel. My nerve endings aren't totally dead, is what fire means.

Humans scream and cry and they beg me for mercy but I don't care. I strike, scratch them and bite them and hit them until they're dead. Then, I eat them. If I don't eat the brains and only the meat they come back and sometimes they join me on my endless journey through the world, trying to stay alive and scare the crap out of the living. Sometimes they go their own way.

If I do eat the brains –which I do occasionally, they don't come back. Their body withers and decays until there's nothing left.

I don't know how long I've been this way. It could've been days, but I think the buildings are too broken down for that, the cities too deserted, the living too scarce.

It could've been months. It could've been years. I don't really know. I don't keep track of time. When I get hungry, I hunt. When I get bored, I move on to a different city. When I start to ponder why I am dead while still people lived, then I stop thinking. As simple as that.

I remember my human life. It wasn't that amazing, really. I just moved out of my parent's house, and they weren't too happy about it. I had an older brother who bullied me when I was growing up. I had friends, a name, an identity. I studied at a university. I was considered smart.

Not smart enough to survive the zombie apocalypse for more than a few days. I'd survived the original chaos, in which so many people die because they don't know what's going on. I survived that, and when everything seemed clear and quiet I went outside. I got trapped by a single zombie. I panicked. She bit me on the shoulder. I killed her, thinking I might be fine.

I turned overnight. I went to sleep completely human and I woke up with a craving for brains and human flesh.

I think I'm close to the city where I grew up, but I'm not sure. Everything looks so different than I remember. There's too much green, too few cars and people, too much rubble and destruction.

I'm on my own right now, no other dead or living humans close to me. Can't say I miss the company. I like being on my own and taking walks.

Sometimes I walk for days on end. Without stopping, without slowing, without taking breaks.

I walked for days now, too. At least I think it's been days. The scenery changed a lot. It became dark quite a few times – night.

Sometimes I wish it'd end. It's boring, dull, never any change. The only excitement comes from killing the living, and that's not really something I remember as a fondness of mine.

There are living humans ahead. I can hear them –they try to be quiet but they fail. I hear them, I smell them, I sense them now I'm dead how I sensed a cheeseburger when I was alive.

I stroll towards them. There's five of them, four young ones and one older one.

Three of them look familiar.

They see me.

I try to remember them.

The oldest one screams and she starts crying.

Mom.

One of the younger ones –he was twenty-three when I died- points a gun at my forehead.

I stop.

Kieran. My brother.

I extend a hand towards my mother. "Mom," I say. I remember them. The craving for their flesh flares up.

Kill them something inside me whispers, kill them and then they'll join you and you will never be alone again. That's the same voice that once told me to eat as many cheeseburgers as I could. I was sick for days after that.

So I ignore the voice. Mom is crying. "Mom. I won't..." talking is difficult. I haven't talked in years. Has it been years? I think it has, Kieran looks older, but that might be the death. Mom's hair is grey now, she has wrinkles.

"Where's dad?" I ask. She shakes her head, still crying. Kieran is yelling at the other living young ones, but still has a gun pointed at me.

"I won't hurt you," I try to convince them. They stop yelling and Kieran looks at me. "Sam," he says. "Kieran," I say.

One of the other ones yells something. Kieran yells back.

"Go," he says. "I don't want to shoot you," he's crying, too. I shake my head. "No," I say. I want him to shoot me.

I don't want people to be afraid of me anymore. I don't want mom to cry anymore because I'm like this. I don't want to eat human flesh anymore –or any kind of meat. Except cheeseburgers. They've always been my one weakness.

"Pull it," I say. I'm tired, my throat hurts and my whole body is hot with the urge to kill. Kieran looks at me like he doesn't understand. "Pull the trigger," I clarify. Then I add, "please."

He looks at mom, then at me. "Fuck," he says. He comes closer and I feel the tip of the gun touching my forehead. I can smell him, I can smell his flesh and my hands are overcome with the urge to grab him, to claw him apart and eat him. I'm so hungry, so, so hungry that I barely notice that the human says something –an apology. Why would a human apologise to me? I eat humans, I kill them and then they join me and I'm going to eat this one too and then the others and

THE END