Blood Ridden

chapter 1; Life's hard, the afterlife is harder

I don't know how much you know about zombie's, but I guess you think of them as mindless creatures who'll tear you to shreds as soon as look at you. I mean, who wouldn't? Me, just because, well, I'm one. My name's... actually, I can't remember what my name was before I became one of the undead, so lets just say I'm Red. It's the colour of the jacket I died in; at least I hope it is. Imagine, how hard it must be to get blood out of clothes - I may be dead but it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to think about looking nice. It's surprising I can think at all. Being a zombie, I'd expect to be looking for someone to eat. But no, I mostly avoid humans. You would too if you were constantly under threat of having what's left of you blown to pieces or hacked off. The only time I go near one is when they are unarmed and wounded. I can't help it. The smell of fresh blood is like a chocolate factory to a chocoholic. It sets off my animal instincts. We all have them. Just some of us can control them, most of the time. Still, moving on. No, wait... I can smell someone... nope; its just leftovers from yesterday, I'll have that later. Right now I need to go and find Zee. He's kind of my zombie boyfriend; I'm a girl by the way. Well, I was when I was alive. Now I'm just a walking corpse to humans. Also, the relationship with Zee is kind of complicated. I like him but he doesn't really have feelings like I do. Well he does, but it's mostly hunger. I guess he was like that when he was alive, we both woke up together in the same room, and it was a huge living room in a house, I still go back there sometimes. There were quite a few of us in there, but there were also humans, I think there was a party, then we were attacked by a group of zombies and at least five of us were turned. But only Zee and me made it out of there. You see, the humans had guns, big guns. One of them I think was my mum, she was crying and yelling at me, trying to get to me, only someone with a gun held her back. Her boyfriend, bastard. He's the only part of my old life I remember. All the pain he caused mum, and me I wonder if he's still alive or with my mum. I hope that some zombie has eaten his heart out, although they probably would have got a stomach-ache, if there were much to eat. I've not seen anyone from my past life since I turned, except Zee. I sometimes wonder if they are still alive or one of the undead. A lot of the time, I try to remember what my past life was like. I think I had a brother, I keep seeing myself in a mirror, holding a little boy with blonde hair and a chocolaty smile. He's probably gone now, sad to think about it. Still I need to find out where Zee has got to...

I don't think this day could get any weirder. I found Zee, he was out hunting (as usual - when does he ever stop eating!) and I can't even believe he found this. It's a locket, containing a picture of me (when I was alive) with a man. But the thing is, I have no idea who he is. He looks a lot older than me, so I can rule out old boyfriend; but I have no similarities to him meaning he definitely isn't my father. Who is he? Oh yeah, I should mention, Zee found this around what remained of the neck of a woman, so I think I found out what happened to my mother after I turned. He said it was quite fresh as he could smell the blood from a mile away. Plus I think he took a bite as he also had some new blood splatters down his front. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. How could he have told me that it was a fresh corpse if he's a zombie? Well, just because zombies are dead, it doesn't mean we can't communicate. We do actually have a language... kind of. To anyone who is alive they just sound like mumbles and groans; but, if you listen to the different sounds that we make, there is actually a pattern to them. Much like with dolphins, (not as stupid as you think I should be am I?) so these different moaning patterns can be translated to a type of language. Although, there wouldn't be much point in translating them as you would probably only get words like 'hungry' and 'kill'. Not much use for a conversation. Speaking of hungry, I'd  better go get lunch.