Day: 12 | Brains:1

Viscera leaked between its teeth. The open socket before it, held in disfigured hands had nothing left. Its rotting digits let the corpse slid down the wall. There were no brains here.

It moved on down the hallway of flashing lights, following the sounds of gunfire and screaming, the hordes of other undead, the scent of the living. It recognized none of this, not really. It merely reacted.

Nothing had changed.

Day: 168 | Brains: 23

It licked its lips, savoring every precious scrap of pink, delicate flesh. The missing fingers irked, as did the crumbling rib cage where most bullets had hit it over the months. It blinked its remaining eye, looking up from its meal, scanning the trend of its herd. None were hurrying, and what fresh meals lay about the place were untouched. Already devoured.

Tall blocks surrounded it. Where before it had wandered woods and fields, it was now in a city, though such words were still beyond it. Only vague sensations, little better than instincts. Follow the herd. Follow the scents of the living. Perhaps a small sense of self preservation. Nothing more.

It was still an animal. Little had changed.

Day: 488 | Brains: 94

Seven in one sweep. The Corpse, for such knowledge had entered its purview, stepped back from that final skull. A smaller Meal than the rest, the one the rest had protected, but equally gratifying. A tough old place to break into, that stone bricked structure. Lots of long sitting-spots, and a stone slab to hide behind at the end.

A refuge of seven Meals, ill equipped. The Corpse had spotted them weeks before, broken off from its herd and located their hideout. After that, all that remained was to… herd. Once the fighting ended it emerged from its spot, blocked the entrance and used the Sharp it had discovered on a Meal. Its near-skeletal hand gripped it with recent understanding and dispatched the other Corpses inside before they could spoil its feast.

Gorged, it unblocked the entrance and stepped outside. The herd idled nearby, calm now that the sounds had stopped, the scent of living evaporating.

It scratched at its exposed spine, discarding a scrap of flesh that would soon have fallen in a few days anyway. It stopped a moment, wondering if that was a good idea. It was already falling apart. Better not make it worse.

After all, things were changing.

Day: 749 | Brains: 223

The Corpse pondered the armaments miles away. Binoculars helped. Some fellow corpses had eaten well enough to use some of their own as well, and so together they examined this fortification. Though none had consumed as much as it, they could still comprehend orders and even had opinions of their own. Not better than its. It had become the Head Corpse.

No, wrote the tall corpse in the ground, gurgling as it finished. No talk. Die.

Die anyway, The Corpse wrote in response. Not many. Thirty-eight guards at all times by its count, weaker on the right side. Not that it should matter, if things went right.

This get brains, it wrote, underlining for all to see. It pointed sternly, and caught the eyes of all others there, daring them to argue. They knew what happened during fights with Corpse. They knew that guns hurt. They did not know how guns worked. Head-Corpse did, and it had one at all times, should any try and turn things on him.

Most were hardly corpses at all anymore. More skeletal, held together by the barest of ligaments and muscle. Yet they still functioned. Despite their tongues disappearing, they retained most of their teeth, and the ligaments connecting their jaws had strengthened somehow. Some quirk of whatever affected them. The question of their condition floated times in the growing mind of Head-Corpse always. But that would come later. For now, they were running out of brains.

It solicited nods from its supporters – That, at least, they understood. It nodded too. They would listen. Every Corpse would listen to Head-Corpse before long.

Hours later, its messages were written, corpses with best legs selected, made harmless and sent on their way. Jaw-less, arm-less messengers.

A peace offering. The humans were getting harder to catch, and so were the Corpses, thanks to Head-Corpse. A stale-mate, which meant less brains for everyone. But Leader-Corpse wouldn’t die. Nor would any of its herd, even deprived of Brains. Humans, it was surprised to learn from a text-book, did. For nothing more than a few brains a month, taken from the naturally dead, the humans would be left alone.

For now. A foot in the door. A reply would soon be forthcoming, and this would merely be the start. Head-Corpse had plans. Things would change for the better.

Day: 1477 | Brains: 449

Head-Zombie, H.Z or just Hazed as the Meal-Humans called it, lay down the paper, pushing it back towards the humans. A sordid list of issues. It reached for a pen.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Its form had long drifted from corpse to mere skeleton, save for those ligaments, veins and muscle held intact. Those on its arms contacted and relaxed visibly and somewhat pleasingly as it wrote.

You are over budgeting your security force, again, it wrote. All the same reasons, which I will not repeat. Your economy simply isn’t strong enough to expand anymore than you have. Not to the south, nor to the north where you think I won’t notice. Because of the cold, and its effect on the Zombies? Ill advised, in both cases.

Furthermore, someone is cooking your books.

Hazed slid the paper across the table, glanced out the window. Its Compound now held only a few hundred Corpses, or ‘Zombies’, now. Plenty still roamed the countryside, a reminder to the humans, led by a team of Smarter-Corpses. Their diet of brains remained steadily controlled, lest they rise above their station. Two-hundred and Forty Thousand now under its thumb across the majority of the Former United States, and millions more a stretch away. Only northern parts of Washington and southern Canada remained, and a smaller, more recently discovered enclave on the shores of Lake Michigan, mere thousands strong.

Letting them grow at all had been a risk, but the only way to help them along with making enough brains. More Meals meant more breeding. More breeding meant more brains, in the future. Only with the human population at a sordid 130,000, the rate of successful offspring was unlikely to reach 3000 within the year, with death rates lagging. With how many brains it required to maintain its system of reward and promotion while balancing its own supremacy, that wasn’t nearly enough without significantly damaging their growth.

In fact, some eighteen of its lieutenants required replacing already. Upon exceeding Three-Hundred brains, their intelligence risked ambition. Unacceptable. There could be no competition, not against Head-Zombie. Not for brains. It made a mental not to get that done today.

It looked back at the humans, the silence in that ruined, powerless, furniture less office stretching on for too long. Then it remembered that all that pondering had taken a second or so, and they were still on the first paragraph. It decided to merely wait out the remaining time thoughtlessly, a facility it had developed recently to avoid madness dealing with the lesser, static intelligence of humans.

“Cooking our books? How the hell would you know that?” the Meal-Human said.

Hazed did not reply. They knew how. That’s why they came to it at all, instead of merely following the truce. They hadn’t the power to waste on computer analysis.

“Well, would you tell us who?”

Hazed took up the pen and wrote: Payment.

The humans used their faces to ‘cringe,’ as they often did at this point. They dragged their feet retrieving their payment. Twenty-three chained Meal-Humans, made to kneel in the corner. One month’s worth.

For once, Head-Zombie decided to keep them for itself. After all, it could do what he wanted with an army of undead at its command, and the humans would deal with no other. In the worlds of both living and dead Head-Zombie remained central.

The additional brains would be crucial in the years to come. It would come slowly, but change would come. Oh, it would come.

Day: 21,031 | Brains: 27,569

The Last-Zombie paused a brief moment, reviewing its thoughts. Eighty-Seven Million investment in each of Alturo Autonomics’ top three competitors to undercut its worth, along with a quick and easy ‘News Report’ about underhanded dealings in the company. A false prediction from top Economists, all handily under Last Zombie’s thumb, about the companies’ failing prospects. Just as the financial backlash begins to hit, and the company’s decline becomes obvious – this would take half a year at least - offer to purchase, then dissolve. They’d likely accept a mere Fifty-Million offer.

The final purchase wasn’t entirely necessary, but there was no risk taking in Last Zombie’s world. It was, after all, the Last-Zombie, and had been for decades. No other super intelligence existed. And none would exist, whether in the form of AI as Alturo had been researching, or Brain-Enhancement procedures, which had been successfully outlawed under Last-Zombie’s graceful hand. Competition meant alternatives to Last-Zombie’s secret reign over the New World, perhaps even a discovery. All that would equal less brains. Unacceptable.

Yes, it would all work out. Last Zombie spent an hour on the computer, desiccated fingers dancing across the keyboard, effortlessly orchestrating its plan.

Its evening meal arrived, carried by its trusty man-servant, as silent as his master, placed before it in that pitch-black room. A single human brain. Its neutral posture vanished as it gorged itself on the pink, fresh meat, slobbering an slurping until nothing was left. Finished, it wiped clean its face and returned to its work.

Eight brains a day. Fewer than it was used to having, but the exponential growth of its intelligence required regular… Maintenance. Each brain added only a static amount to its intelligence, something roughly equivalent to one-quarter of an IQ point – an outdated form of measurement, but it had no other terminology - but it did nothing to fix inferior or broken frameworks of the mind. Frameworks that had, at several points, nearly driven it mad through overstimulation.

Patience in all things, even with brains. Soon it would create the perfect framework for infinite growth. All it would take, with the vast brilliance it had now, was a few more decades of careful growth and regular restructuring of its mind.

It’s control over the human world and its population, its ‘Government’ and scientific growth required maintenance too. Newer technologies, it had found, brought higher education, which brought questions. Improvements in medical sciences allowed things like Birth Control, abortions, reductions in the effects of aging. Unacceptable.

But the humans of the world were smart, in their own way. Like an ant colony, greater than their sum. Without constant watch, its control would slip. Last-Zombie trusted no-one but itself to maintain the myriad balances it had wrought throughout the world, and without its constant presence they would falter. Conditioning might wear, upstarts might arise unhindered, silent catastrophes could go unnoticed.

Last Zombie did not breath, so it did not sigh. It had no brow to furrow, even if it wanted to. None of this really mattered. It could, and would, all be handled. After all, that was the straightest path to more brains. Nothing else mattered.

It would stay in its underground bunker, use its gathered wealth and influence to command the world and keep its flow of brains coming. Population would remain steady. Opinions would not falter from the norm. The economy trudge along as instructed. World leaders would push the correct thoughts, or be laughed at, ridiculed, ostracized. All coming from the single remaining Zombie, hidden in an underground bunker without luxury, without colour, without a bed or a carpet. Only a chair, a terminal, and a steady supply of Brains.

No. Things were perfect as they were. And nothing would ever change again.

Except, perhaps, for more brains.