Turning Pages Flash Fiction contest

I remember what my life was like before the Zombie Apocalypse hit.  I was 8 years old, a happy normal kid, playing my X box 360 and killing it, rolling through the games levels like a pro.  Then the window broke in the living room. I heard the animal like breathing of a predator.  An animal that had been a human had entered our home and was now hunting me.  Intense fear consumed me and the next thing I recall is I am one of them, the bitten, and infected.  The hunger is consuming now, and I search for new prey always…searching aching and hungry.  Somehow through the fog in my Zombie mind I recognize it is nearly Christmas.  Happy memories flood my mind.  Memories of my parents and the puppy I called Rex that Santa left me on my sixth birthday.  An anguished roar of pain escapes me.  I am ashamed of what I have become.  I search for a place to hide and escape this season.  Merry Christmas?  Hardly a possibility given I am now a Zombie hunting all that I was.  Hungry for human flesh, I hide in the basement of this ancient and abandoned house hoping that the memories will fade of what my life was like before…. Before the hunger infected my mind.

It is Christmas Eve now and I have stayed hidden now in the basement of this abandon mansion, for nearly a week.  Others have joined me, we sway back and forth in the dark. Moaning, and reeling in pain of the memories we have of what our lives once were before the infection took us.  The cold is unbearable, but not nearly as difficult to tolerate as the constant hunger.  Nothing seems to make that pain go away.  The night is long and the bitter cold bites us as we sway, back and forth back and forth.  Outside I can faintly hear the wind blowing and somehow through the Zombie fog in my brain I realize it is snowing.  Christmas eve and it is snowing.  In my past life I would have been elated at a white Christmas.  I am not happy now.  Angry and hungry is all I feel, angry for being forgotten, bypassed by the hope I used to know and feel.  It is all gone now, everything gone.  I snarl a loud evil Zombie cry of anguish at all that I have lost.  The other zombies around me feel my rage and loss and also cry out, we are instantly transformed into a chorus of the undead.  Howling and angry at the world for our loss.

A thud loudly echoes through the House and we all stop our cries in an instinctive collective moment.  Like birds turning instinctively in the wind changing direction for no apparent reason we collectively turn and listen to the night.  THUD again there it is.  The madness of our infection drives us to action, we pour out of the basement and the darkness flowing up the stairway in a collective mass of predatory starving Zombie horde.  One thing is driving our actions; Hunger, incredible hunger.

Searching the home for our prey we hear another loud thud.  AAAAUUUGGH we cry out as one.  A mass of evil starving undead formerly human beings searches the home for the cause of the thud.  We search room to room, as methodically as our Zombie infected minds are able.  Finally we come to the huge Main living room.  There is a fire roaring in the fireplace, I feel warmth vaguely my mind recalls the comfort that heat used to provide.  There are bright colorful lights that hurt my eyes and I snarl and waive my arms at the pain they cause.  I realize the others Zombies are snarling as well at the brightness.  Slowly the pain recedes and I begin to be able to focus me eyes on the lights.  The impossibility of what I am seeing stops me dead in my tracks. The hunger was driving my madness, but even it has taken a back seat to the sight in front of me.  We all stop our Zombie screaming, howling, and moaning as we stare.  It is a tree in the middle of the abandon living room and not just any tree, a brightly lit Christmas tree.  Our Zombie minds are overwhelmed with the sight.  Memories surge forward of what we were, what out lives had been, all that we took for granted.  I feel tears starting to flow and looking from zombie face to zombie face I see that I am not the only one so affected by the sight of the bright and colorful tree.  For what felt like forever we stood and absorbed the beauty of the tree, somehow we had missed there was a small package in the middle of the floor.  No one moved we just stared at it.  Finally I stepped forward and clumsily got down on my zombie knees, starting to pull off the ribbon and wrapping paper.  I opened the package.  THUD the sound again.  No one moved, not one zombie moaned or turned to hunt our potential prey.  For a moment we were fixed on the open box, lost in the memories of where we had been who we had been before the infection hit.  For that brief moment we were human again.  THUD again and then “Merry Christmas” rang out through the cold bitter air.  Bells and the sound of movement on the roof echoed through the mansion.  A smile crossed my face as I pulled the contents from the box and lifted it into the air to show my fellow zombies.  We may have become an evil horde of undead, starving flesh-eating zombies, driven by hunger and the infection that had taken our world, but for a moment, just a small moment we remembered warmth and the happiness that was Christmas.

ZF.