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It was very cold by now. Dawn had come, and with it came an uneasy chill in the air. Then again, my apartment was considerably warmer than the frozen hell which was outside. The empty Smirnoff bottle which had given me warmth so many hours ago was now stain-covered and empty, lying on the floor. I observed as insects came through small cracks in the wall and surrounded the bottle. They climbed all over it and, upon finding nothing to satisfy their needs, scattered away, back into their holes. It seemed very hard at that moment not to compare these tiny, vile creatures to ourselves. After all, like insects, we too seem to strive for one thing: to satisfy our needs. Whether it be hunger, greed or lust, god made us what we are and it has become our way of life. No one is safe from it. No one.

Slouched and sitting on my couch, I examined my wound. One of those demented "people" had grabbed me and violently scratched my lower stomach, making a massive rip in the skin. I managed to struggle out of the grasp of my attacker and run away, to my building. Thus here I am, in my eighth floor apartment. It's fairly cozy, but most importantly it keeps me safe from the world below. I had fallen asleep only to awaken to a different world-a much more violent one.

I had wrapped a fresh bandage around my waist hours ago to keep myself from bleeding to death, but by now it was already soaked in blood which had penetrated through the fabric. Luckily, the bleeding had stopped. I got up and straightened my body out. Doing so I heard a snap in my spine and a sudden intense pain in the wound. "Dammit!" I cursed.

Slowly but surely I made my way into the solarium and caught a breeze of fresh air. On the eighth floor, it was hard not to experience a gust of wind or a slight breeze, no matter what kind of weather there was.

Looking out I could see the early morning sun, partially covered by buildings and trees covering the skyline. This wasn't exactly a heavily populated urban area, but it wasn't a rural area either. It was a cross between the two. There were few buildings, but many parks and houses. Stores were everywhere you looked. And there was quiet. Quiet and serenity. Whatever the area was, I knew I'd never want to move.

Staring down at the streets below, there was a much different story. By now the city was infested with those "creatures", which I later found out were simply people who had already died. Corpses. Zombies. Call them what you will, they were dangerous. Yet at first glance they appeared so harmless. Those who made the mistake of assuming that were the ones who ended up torn apart and eaten.

Like I said before, both insects and humans seemed to have one goal: to satisfy their needs. These corpses were also looking for their needs. Only they weren't looking for five-thousand dollar watches or european sports cars, they were in search of something different. This was something they craved: human flesh.

Like beasts in the wild, these zombies seem to have one goal on their mind: food. Their food? us. The living. If they saw a person, they would drag themselves toward that person and try to consume them. They were dangerous if they ever got close to you, but far away, they were powerless. They seemed to advance at a deliberately slow pace, never walking properly, always dragged their lifeless bodies. Sometimes when they got close to a member of the living, they would raise their arms and stetch them outward in an attempt to grab ahold of what they were after. It was as though a small child was signaling it's need for something that just seemed so out of reach.

Physically, they were weak. They could not open doors or pick up heavy objects. They had no facial expression, no emotion, no manners and would always walk as though they were in a trance. They were the dead, nothing more. "People of the past", as I like to call them. But how can they function after their organs are rotted away? the answer was simple. The brain. It has always been the decider of mankind. Thinking, one could achieve anything. Like a hard drive in a computer, a brain stored all your thoughts. All your memories. All your recollections. All your fears. All your wants. All your needs. It always drove you to do the things you did.

Could these zombies act on the same basic principles? if even in some small way, were these creatures re-acting out some of the situations they had encountered in their real lives? could they remember themselves?

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