It didn’t know when the last time it had eaten.  It could have been days, weeks, months but its mind and memory didn’t work that way.  Hunger overrode almost every thought.

What thoughts it did have were a jumble of primal images and sensory impressions.  Light.  Dark.  Sometimes hot, sometimes cold.  Noises.  Shouts.  Screams.  Grabbing.  Tearing.  Biting.  Red.  But cutting through all of these was the overriding compulsion to eat.  A gnawing hunger deep in its being, relentless and ever present.  Ravenously so, and that’s what drove it on.  Never sleeping, never really resting, always on the move.

It stumbled over a half-height split rail fence and tripped to the hard ground as its kind was not known for its dexterity.  Fumbling, it returned to its feet and shambled into a small tree, reaching out a desiccated hand to keep from falling over again.  Its gray mottled fingers ran over the trees rough bark not appreciating of the nuance of the texture.  A dim illumination allowed it to only see a few feet ahead as it pushed off the tree, continuing along in search of food.  Thorny bushes tugged at its worn and tattered pants, slowing its process, but it seemed not to notice as the thorns bit into its flesh, tearing tiny grooves in the greyish brown skin on its legs.

The dim light gave way to total blackness just ahead, but it continued forward, unafraid of the dark because it never knew fear.  In fact, any emotion was completely foreign to it.  Some people said they thought they saw frustration in its face.  Others felt it expressed sadness but these were just feeble attempts to anthropomorphize it.  It was just something people did because they couldn’t understand its existence and felt compelled to construct elaborate parameters to make sense of it.  That was just the way of people and it wasn’t a person.  It hadn’t been for a long, long time.

The blackness became solid as it grunted with the suddenness of impact.  It moved its hands along the blackness feeling its smooth surface, it fingers playing over slight grooves but finding no purchase on them.  It sided stepped again and again moving along the blackness trying to find a way around it or through it.  But there was no way to proceed onward.  Frustration was completely foreign to its being so instead of pounding or railing against the implacable black barrier it just turned around and went back the way it came.

The bushes once again pulled at its pants.  It passed the same tree again just as it had passed that tree hundreds of times each day, never remembering it.  It was there in the present of its consciousness and then gone like fleeting rain storm, lost in the past that it quickly forgot.

Since its memory was only measured in seconds, maybe minutes, it had no recall that it had been traversing this same ground endlessly, making a circuit around the space each day of its seemingly perpetual existence.  Its path took it east through a small meadow of grass and then on to another impassible wall of black.  It moved off to the west only to find same black barrier.

It moved back again in the direction it came when it caught something out of the corner of its eye.  A movement.  Movement could mean food and its instinct kicked in.  Taking the most direct path toward the movement, it trampled over bushes and fell over the broken split rail fence again, but was undeterred, singled minded in its goal of getting to the movement driven by an quenchable desire to get to the food.

The movement came again, a ghost of a shadow, but still it was something.  It was just ahead and it felt a stirring in its inner being as the craving increased.  Salivary glands filled its mouth with a thick viscous fluid that flowed over its toothless gums.  The movement came again and the face of child appeared in its field of vision.  The face was blurry and indistinct, but it was there, getting the juices flowing as some would say.

Then just as suddenly as it had come, the movement was gone.  Still it trudge forward, increasing its speed.  Its momentum was impressive, but that momentum ended suddenly as it collided with an invisible barrier.  The impact was greater than the previous one with the black barrier and it was knocked to the ground.  The collision caused a small fissure on its forehead that sent an oozing stream of reddish-black blood down into its eyes, blurring its vision.  It tried to get up, but what was left of its brain was momentarily scrambled so it just sat on the ground, its legs splayed out in front of it, blood from the wound mixing with the saliva, and dripping from its chin.

“Cool,”Joey said from his position behind the one-way mirrored glass.  Ten feet in front of that mirrored glass was a set of double-paned bulletproof glass windows.  Between the two sets of glass panels was a ten foot deep moat — just in case something went wrong.  Above the moat was a set of lights that allowed the people to see in, but prevented the specimen from seeing out.  Until today.  One of those lights flickered and brighten, repeating this cycle, over and over again.

Oblivious to either what the kids said or what was really happening in the exhibit, the tour guide worked off the memorized script running in her head.  Her name was Natalie and she had been at the museum for nearly four years.  This was her 4,000 tour of fifth graders.

“This is the last known specimen of a zombie from the Zombie Wars fought in the United States.  His name is not known, but he was found west of Los Angeles after the firebombing of the city.  He was kept in captivity and out of public view for over sixty years.  There are other specimens in Asia and in South America along with Australia.  It is rumored that there are many specimens on the continent formerly known as Africa but radioactivity prevents any searches in the area.”

A hand flew up in front of Natalie’s face and she looked down to see a precocious ten year old girl with her blond hair pulled back tightly into a neat ponytail.  The girl, oooed and ahhed until Natalie acknowledged her.

“Why didn’t they just kill it?”The little girl asked.

Natalie’s preparation had her ready for this question.  “This exhibit was established ten years ago to help us remember.  As the famous philosopher, George Santayana, said, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Politicians from the national capital in Boulder, along with soldiers, and other leaders felt it important to remember the threat and the sacrifice of those who lived and died before us.” She put a lot of emphasis on the word ‘sacrifice.’

This flew over the heads of the children, but whoever wrote the script felt it was important.  The kids were totally engrossed in the creature behind the glass.  Up until now, they had only seen them in documentaries.  It was like a monster movie, only in real life.

Another hand shot up and Natalie acknowledge the child with nod of her head.

“What if it gets out and bites someone?”

“Long ago, this zombie had all its teeth removed so that it cannot bite.  Every precaution has been taken to prevent the zombie from escaping.  As you can see the moat is in place plus the two sets of safety windows.  These protect us plus the zombie from harm.”

“Then why is it bleeding?” Joey asked.

A crack appeared in Natalie’s rigid preparation and she broke from her script, turning to look back into the exhibit.  The zombie was down, its legs spread, reddish-black blood pooling in its lap.  Her stomach made an involuntary lurch, but she staved off the wave of nausea.  Each guide carried a panic button and as casually as she could, she grabbed hers.  One press for a simple alert.  Two was serious and that meant bring weapons.  Lots of them.  She only pressed once.

“Well children,”she said, keeping her voice calm and even.  “Let’s move on to the theater to see the documentary…”She was cut off by the children’s sighs and exclamations of disappointment but soldiered on.  “The documentary is very exciting and tells the story of the Zombie Wars here in the U.S.  Plus its shot in IMAX Holo-vision.” She tried to add a little pizzazz to the words ‘IMAX Holo-vision.’

This got the children’s attention and she was able to herd them off in the direction of the theater.  Only a few looked back at the zombie as it bled into its lap.

The electronic signage outside the hallway leading to the exhibit changed from active to temporarily closed.  The long line of visitors let out groans while some just grumbled.

By the time the kids were safely in their seats engaged with the documentary of the human’s victory over the undead, the specimen was standing and clawing at the glass at the front of the exhibit, leaving long streaks of blood.  It was only a matter of moments before the memory of the child’s face receded away, leaving it swaying slightly back and forth as if in a gentle breeze.

Just two minutes after the specimen lost the memory of the child’s face, three different crews went to work.  An extraction team with specially designed catch poles nabbed the specimen and spirited it out the black wall at the back of the exhibit.  A med team flew into action with the efficiency of a race car pit crew to restore the specimen back to its peak condition.  A third crew, the decontamination team sealed in biohazard suits, exhaustively poured over the exhibit with special blood detectors, cleaning up any traces of the specimen’s blood.

“What do you think riled it up?” The museum director asked as they reviewed the multiple angles of video recordings of the exhibit.  He was a gray-haired man with a ramrod straight posture who never smiled.  He and his video surveillance coordinator were in the museum’s state-of-the-art control facility that looked like a room out of NASA’s launch center with all its monitors and computer control units.

“I don’t know, sir, but as you can see,”a man of about thirty with a doughy face said pointing to one of the monitors, “something catches the specimen’s attention about here.” He tapped the image on the monitor.  The zombie’s head jerked to the right and then it surged forward with purpose.

“Well, what got its attention?”The director said.

The younger man wanted to shrug but knew better.

The director exhaled loudly.  “Can you get me the live video outside the exhibit right now?”The director asked.

The younger man punched a series of buttons and the image of a seemingly endless line of people extending out of camera view appeared on the screen.  None of them looked very happy.

“Time is money folks.  We need this exhibit back online, ASAP,”the director growled.

“We have a crew down in the exhibit now.  Maybe they’ve found something.”the younger man said in attempt to diffuse the anger seething forth from the director.

“Well, what are you waiting for, let’s see what they’re up to.”

The younger man did his magic with the buttons and an overhead wide-shot of the exhibit appeared on the gargantuan main screen.  The decontamination crew buzzed around the exhibit like bees sucking up the remnants of the specimen’s blood.

“Can I talk to them and can I hear what they say?”The director asked.

The younger man pulled up a microphone and handed it to the director who leaned towards the monitor.

“Violet, do you have anything?”He asked and his voice boomed in the exhibit room.  No one in the room mistook his voice for anyone other than the director.

A middle aged woman in a biohazard suit looked up to the video camera and said, “We think we know what it is.” She pointed towards the front of the exhibit.  “One of the lights over the moat is shorting out.  When it hits a certain illumination, we can see through the one-way glass into the observation space.  It’s not clear, but we think the specimen spotted someone because of the lighting issue.”

“Well, get it fixed and be quick about it,”the director said slammed the microphone down.

And they were quick.  In fifteen minutes, the light was fixed.  The med team did its work and stitched up the specimen’s forehead.  Before re-introducing the specimen back to the exhibit, the handlers even fed it a viscous protein paste that it slopped down greedily. These ‘snacks’are what kept the specimen nourished and in proper working order but never ended its hunger.

In a reverse process, the handlers used the catch poles to return the specimen to the exhibit quickly and efficiently, exiting out the push panels on the back wall.  It followed them and clawed at the blackness for several minutes before forgetting what it was doing and why.

But it didn’t forget its hunger and moved away from the blackness in search of food.

It didn’t know when the last time it had eaten.  It could have been days, weeks, months but its mind and memory didn’t work that way.  Hunger overrode almost every thought.

***

R.J. Spears is a filmmaker and award winning mystery and horror writer who lives in Columbus, Ohio.   He has had crime stories published on the websites Shotgun Honey and A Twist of Noir along with taking runner-up in the Indianapolis Murder and Mayhem Short Story contest for his story “Skeletons Out of the Closet.” His first published horror story, “The Dark Child,” is scheduled to be released in the December edition of The Horror Zine. There are few things he enjoys more than a good zombie story. He is currently working on a zombie apocalypse novel set in Ohio.