Winner!
Third Place Sci-Fi Winner on The Dream Awards July 2020.
What would happen if one day you were infected with a virus that ate at your brain, your skin, and all your internal organ all while you were self-aware?
Would you still feel? Want to...
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It'd been a week since Teal made the decision to embrace her destiny, yet she hadn't. Speaking with Marc had proven difficult. She'd been so embarrassed by her naive, childish display, she hadn't stepped foot in the club since that night she couldn't forget. Instead, she'd regressed to her mundane routine.
Teal slept for twelve full hours, from six in the morning to six in the evening. Every day upon awakening, her mother had her favorite meal ready, a plate of sautéed chicken hearts and raw diced human brains, or some variation of it on the table.
She wasn't sure about the politics behind it, but it was somehow agreed, humans would send corpses from their side of the fence to the zombie side. Then, they were transported to the meat plant. Teal guessed the exchange was mostly done by the humans out of fear. Likely, they believed starvation might encourage her kind to cross over and eat them.
Teal rolled her eyes, "So that's why they put some effort into it," she whispered to herself.
The more capable zombies who worked at the plant cut the bodies and distributed them as best they could to everyone in the region. They had marked buildings where all the zombies arrived for nightly rations. Teal wasn't sure how the zombies who couldn't reach the warehouses received food. Frankly, she had never given it much thought. However, she knew many of her kind, still starved. They'd grown in large numbers and even though humans claimed to have controlled the pandemic, new zombies appeared on their side of the fence, nightly.
The human corpses came in very large wooden boxes, which were returned empty at the end of the week, to be filled again, with more dead bodies. She knew this, because her mother; before working at the farm, had been employed there and told her so.
It was silly humans thought zombies would want to cross the border when most of them didn't even think about the living, let alone commit murder. The more capable zombies farmed animals to eat and of course, took everything the humans sent and processed it. Not one part of their body was wasted.
However, if she was being honest with herself, Teal had to admit there wasn't anything better than the taste of human brains. Thanks to the high-fat content, one adult, human brain, could feed a family of four for three days.
"Thanks, mom."
"Have you given any more thought to what you want to do?"
"Nope. Not really. I'll let you know though," she lied.
She didn't want her mother to ask about Marc, nor his methods. But the truth was, she thought about it every waking hour. When she slept and her dreams and nightmares took over, they spoke about her fate if she crossed. Images of her being consumed by the sun, or a mob of wickedly, angry people, haunted her.
Humans were known to be unforgiving and ruthless when it came to all other species on earth. If she was being honest, to be among them, frightened her more than anything in the world. More than facing the sun.
