Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Mechanical Affection ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

Mechanical Affection- Prologue

The `fact' that zombies are a bunch of mindless flesh eating machines is not entirely true. It was a lie that has been fed to society by the government through popular culture media. In truth, zombies have feelings too, warped as they may be, and some cognitive function, though limited.

I was a teenage boy when the zombie apocalypse thing became more than a movie or comic book theme. I was too young to think things through but old enough to want to be a part of the action. Needless to say, I got bit and wished, as I lay dying, that I'd paid a little more attention to lectures about what it really was to be a zombie.

I kinda wished that even more, when I woke up dead, colder and stiffer than I'd ever been in my entire life… Well, we'll just say than I'd ever been because life wasn't exactly what I was living then or now. I was suffering badly from rigor mortis so I'd been dead at least three hours, though I couldn't tell much more than that though. I was just some dumb kid up until I died and I sure as hell didn't get any smarter after my brain had started to go to mush.

It must have taken hours for me to get to my feet. It's not like in the movies where a zombie is born and it's up and after you in a matter of minutes. No, my nerves were shot. When I tried to move, the response was sluggish and when I tried to make multiple movements the signals got all muddled up and I'd end up convulsing on the ground like I was having some sort of seizure; maybe I was.

When I eventually did stand, I took a good hour or two to learn to walk again. I dragged my feet to keep tipping over and falling, it worked well on pavement not so great anywhere there was a bump. I tripped often and fell like a board, I no longer had the fast reflexes to catch myself but it was more irritating that anything else. I only had the remnants of a sense of touch so when I bashed my face into the sidewalk there was no pain to be had. The only thing I could feel was pressure and some strange bursts of pleasure when I felt something warm, they were almost orgasmic.

I had gotten the hang of things after a half a day. I could walk, make strange gurgling noises when I spoke, and navigate well enough that I didn't stumble or trip so often. Only after my initial learning period did I begin to take notice of the little things, or, oh maybe, some were big things.

My skin, which used to be flush with blood, was now some ashen grey and, while I could not feel particularly well, I imagined it to be something akin to leather. When I pinched it, the indentation would stay until I rubbed most of it away. It was very strange to have skin that way, I often felt swollen and droopy, like my mouth after general anesthetic at the dentist but all over. I wasn't though, I could see that.

My mouth was in a constant state of foulness, reminiscent of days I woke up after having eaten a rare steak the night before and not brushed. My saliva thick enough to make my mouth feel cottony and dry even when moist… It wasn't quite rotten, but it was close.

The real disgusting flavor only came when I would cough up something out of my lungs or gut, everything wasn't quite sludge but what was would come up when I felt the uncomfortable bloat beginning to well up inside me… Though, my coughs were nothing more than some slow vomitous motion. My muscles weren't coordinated enough to cough so I would double over oddly and slowly wretch up the fluid and gas. Even I was utterly repulsed by the apparently common affliction, I still am.

~

I remember my life vaguely from before; I remember killing zombies, playing videos games, having some completely wild sex with someone I barely knew, and I remembered my family too. Most of it was a jumbled mess and no real memories were very clear, but I knew enough that the people I once fucked, or loved, or hung out with would blow my brains out the instant they saw me. I also knew how to work a lot of things I did before, but no longer had the dexterity to do them. With no one living to hang out with and no fun to be had playing games, I made an attempt to get to know my fellow zombies and I learned some things… Or rather assumed some. The lack of communication from our rotten brains to our bodies kind of ruins the chance of talking it up to other living dead.

The first thing to know about zombies is that they aren't all made equal. I found I was a lot smarter than a lot of blokes like me. The length of time truly dead and the means of death play a hell of a role in what you'll be like when you're walking around in a corpse of a body. I was lucky, I wasn't fully dead for an extended period of time and I was quite in tact so my body could still hold onto a lot of its former memories and life. Those that were dead much longer or where missing major chunks of their bodies weren't quite as well off. They were either really stupid, or so fucked up from the shock of missing a couple of pounds of flesh here or there that they might as well have been machines on a processing line. Just going through the motions I say, or would say if I could talk.

The second thing to know about zombies is we're not exactly drawn to human flesh. It just so happens we enjoy the warmth of living tissue and humans are probably the slowest and dumbest things out there… Aside from zombies. So when we get the munchies, we eat the nearest warm thing we can get out grubby little hands on.

Third thing to know is that even while some of us are a bit smarter than normal… We have little to no inhibitions. That part of brain that tells us that it's wrong to hurt people just isn't there anymore and I imagine it's a black slime that now cushions what's left of our brains. I'm sure you've heard of some strange drug or crazy accident that totally shot someone's sense of restraint, if not you've at least known or seen some drunken slob going postal over something insignificant. It's just like that… But far worse. At least we don't get angry.

The last thing one should know about zombies is we go through strange physical cycles. I don't have a clue why or how but we do. At night, when it's cold, we aimlessly search for warmth and we're quite good at feeling any heat that might be radiating off, say, a human being or recently running car engine. We're not very good at smelling things out, or seeing in the dark, or hearing so if you've ever got a parade of us coming after you a fire extinguisher or cold lake is a good bet when seeking safety. During the day, we can most often be found basking in the sun minding our own business until hunger drives us to take a nibble out of someone or something too slow to get out of our way. They probably don't mention this in the movies or papers but we get some wicked hard boners when we get warm, well the men of us do… I'm sure there's some female equivalent, but I never cared to find out. We get great satisfaction from warmth.

Needless to say, for the smarter of us… Hanging out with a crowd of ourselves just isn't optimal. Instead, I'd taken to following around groups of living people. I liked to watch them, listen to their conversations, and if I was lucky they had a TV or radio that I could enjoy from afar. Sometimes I'd eat them; sometimes I'd turn them…. We'd hang out for a while before they decided I wasn't such great company either. It was always sad to see them go. Being a zombie is lonely business.

I wasn't always a complete jerk. Sometimes I thought I was quite helpful. You know when a group of survivors gets together and there's always that one person that's a complete dick to everyone else? Yeah, well, sometimes I killed them just to help everybody out if I got the chance. I took great pride in knowing I was the slayer of the surviving assholes of the world.

Which, I guess, is where this story begins…