The Brains of the Operation

Day: 12 | Brains:1

Viscera dripped from its mouth. It looked at the open socket before it, disfigured hands grasping it by the jaw. None left. The corpse faded from its mind. There were no brains here.

It moved on, 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 to get every scrap. Its missing fingers irked it, as did the crumbling rib cage where most of the 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. Even a small sense of self preservation.

It was still an animal. Little had changed.

Day: 488 | Brains: 94

Seven in one sweep. The Corpse, for it knew what it was now, stepped back from that final skull, a smaller Meal than the rest, the one the rest had protected. A tough old place to break into, 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 was over it emerged from its spot, blocked the entrance and used the Sharp it had discovered on a Meal. Its near-skeletal hand gripping it with newfound understanding, and dispatched the other Corpses inside before they could spoil its feast. They didn’t matter.

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 enough to use some of their own as well, and so they all examined this fortification with their varying capacities. Though none had consumed as much as it, they could still comprehend orders and even had opinions of their own. Useless opinions of the underfed.

No, Tall-Smart-Corpse wrote in the ground, for most had lost their tongues long ago. 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, and underlined 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 this Leader-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 were stronger, more wholesome. Somehow. Some quirk of whatever affected them. The question of their condition floated at all times in the growing mind of Leader-Corpse at all times. 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 Leader-Corpse. 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 the humans would be left alone.

But that would only be the start. A foot in the door. Head-Corpse had plans. Things would change for the better.

Day: 1477 | Brains: 449

Head-Zombie, Hay-Zed or just Hazed as the Meal-Humans called it, put down the listed issues the humans brought it. Its form had long drifted from corpse to mere skeleton, a few selected 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. I won’t go over the reasons any more. Waste your time and money at your leisure. Otherwise your economy simply isn’t strong enough to expand anymore than you have. Despite your reports saying otherwise, I know you’re scouting north where my Herds can’t roam as freely. 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 whose diet of brains remained steadily controlled, lest they rise above their station. Its mind drifted once more over its entire operation, all resting on the procurement of brains and the control of the Herds of Corpses. Two-hundred and Forty Thousand now under its thumb across the majority of the 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.

Truly, 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. But with their population, a sordid 130,000, the rate of breeding would never exceed three-thousand a year. And 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, it would have to purge the higher ranks sometime soon again.

It looked back at the humans, wondering why they’d taken so 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?”

Hazed did not reply. They knew how. That’s why they came to it at all, instead of merely following the truce. It waited once more.

“Well, would you tell us who?”

Hazed took up the pen, and wrote: You are late. Payment.

The humans cringed, as they always did. They dragged their feet retrieving their payment, and so did the Meals. Twenty-three this month.

For once, Hazed 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 wouldn’t deal with any other Zombie. In both the Human world and that of the Undead, Head-Zombie remained the centre.

Besides, 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 thousand investment in Alturo Autonomics’ top three competitors to unsettled its lead, 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, offer to purchase, then dissolve. After three months they’d likely accept a mere $300,000,000 offer, a measly amount compared to their true, underestimated $4,000,000,000 worth, but sudden catastrophic disaster would bring out the coward in their CEO.

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. The rest had died off decades ago. That meant that no other super intelligence existed. And none could exist, whether in the form of AI as Alturo had been researching, or Brain-Enhancement procedures. 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 sent the final email.

Its evening meal arrived, carried by its trusty man-servant, as silent as his master. They did not need to communicate. A fresh human brain placed before it eight times a day. Last Zombie ate with its skeletal hands, as it always had. Some things would never change.

Eight brains a day. Fewer than it was used to having, but the exponential growth of its intelligence required more sessions of intense focus to maintain. Each brain added only a static amount to its intelligence, something roughly equivalent to one-half of an IQ point – an outdated form of measurement, but it had no other terminology, for it did not allow the Meals to develop such things, and it had no true care for language - but it did nothing to fix inferior or broken frameworks of the mind. Frameworks that had, at several points, nearly driven it mad, made it the animal it had began as through over-stimulation.

No, it had to pace itself. 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 stagnant growth and daily re-building of its mind. Or a few months of peace and quiet.

But it could not afford that. It’s control over the human world and its population, its ‘Government’ and scientific growth. Newer technologies, it had found, brought with it higher education, which brought questions. Improvements in medical sciences allowed things like Birth Control, abortions, reductions in the effects of aging. None of it could be allowed.

But the humans of the world were smart, in their own way. Like an ant colony, greater than their sum. In those few months of absence things could easily fall out of control. 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, secret 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.

So it would stay in its underground bunker, use its gathered wealth and influence to manipulate the world and keep its flow of brains coming. Population would remain steady. Opinions would not falter from the norm. The economy would flourish and falter as necessary. 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 the chair and the 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.