A Zombie History Lesson (Disney's ZOMBIES)

Lesson 3: Controlling Zombie Diets

(Finally, a new history lesson! This one is a bit shorter than the others. I only have one or two very vague ideas left for history lessons, so if there's any part of zombie history or culture you might want to read about, let me know!)

The shock collars worked. So now, zombies could carry out relatively normal lives. They could talk. They could socialize. They could work, play, eat...

Eat.

The problem had become clear to the patrol that the matter of eating might not be as simple as other aspects of the zombies' day-to-day lives. They were still holding out hope for a cure, or for the mutation to perhaps... regress over time, and moreso they wanted to continue their experiments, all of which meant it was in their best interest to make sure the zombies could at least survive. They had to eat. Far too many humans had been maimed, and even killed, by now and they weren't going to lose any more lives to the zombies, but what else were they supposed to feed them? Certainly not meat, they couldn't risk letting the zombies regain a taste for flesh. They would send the town's other scraps through the barrier to be distributed instead.

They should have known that wasn't good enough. It wasn't good enough to satisfy the zombies' hunger. It wasn't good enough to satisfy any person's hunger. Zombies were practically starved , and what's more, they were experiencing what could only be described as withdrawals. They craved meat – flesh, organs, even blood, and without it, they were reaching a near feral state of hunger, even if their shock collars were keeping their hearts beating and their brains processing. And still, they refused to even offer them meat.

Fights broke out in Zombie Town; zombies were taking their hunger out on not only each other, but whatever poor stray animals or urban wildlife wandered across the barrier's boundaries as well. Patrol officers tried to break them up, but that only turned the attacks onto them. The zombies weren't entirely unstable, their collars were working properly, but the hunger was unbearable. The mutation weakened them and their bodies ached without the right fuel. And yet, the humans still feared the very thought of letting them eat meat. They compared it to sharks catching a whiff of blood – it would only make the carnage worse. Did they care that they had no proof? When did they ever care about such things?

All zombies were placed under temporary house arrest until the patrol could come up with a solution.

Scientists at the containment facility experimented with various kinds of flavourings, seasonings, oils, sweeteners, whatever they could come up with. Anything that could resemble the taste or the texture of meat. They found some basis to work off of in vegetarian and vegan foods, and developed zombie versions using the flesh, organ and blood substitutes they created. It came time to test the products and they distributed simple meals throughout Zombie Town. Aggression between the zombies came to a halt, attacks on the officers lessened, and animals seemed safe to roam the streets, though they were still rare in the wasteland that was Zombie Town.

Then something unexpected happened. Well, unexpected in the eyes of the humans, at least. They still saw zombies as monsters, after all; they couldn't even trust them to keep pets without eating them. But regardless of what they believed, the zombies were, ultimately, human, too. They had human lives once, human families. Heritage. Culture. Zombie culture was growing, of course, but as their sentience and consciousness returned to them, so too did memories of their individual backgrounds.

There had been a library in the west of Seabrook, close to the power plant, and though they were old and damaged, plenty of books were left on the shelves, including books on those human cultures and in particular, their cuisines. Cookbooks and travel guides taught them about their past lives, what their old human families would have eaten. What they were missing out on because they were controlled by these cravings. They started experimenting themselves.

The basic, bland foods delivered to them by zombie containment were no comparison to what was described in the books, but with a little creativity, mixing them up, trying things out, and being lucky enough to pick up something good when leftovers from Seabrook's restaurants and grocery stores were sent to Zombie Town, the zombies found ways to blend the old with the new and put a zombie spin on their human backgrounds. Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Indian and so many others all had zombie variations.

The humans at zombie containment were finding it tedious to produce food for the zombies themselves. Evidently, the zombies were capable of making their own food as long as they had the meat substitutes to add in, so it was decided that the oils and seasonings and such would be sent directly to Zombie Town, as well as the waste food they already received, and a few extra ingredients that might be deemed unfit for human consumption. Zombies were given control over their own diets. To an extent.

And when adult zombies were eventually granted access into Seabrook to work, and they could earn some money, small businesses began to open up in the once abandoned buildings of Zombie Town. Windows may be broken, walls may crumble, and lights may flicker, but zombie society was coming together. They had their own restaurants, cafés and even a grocery store, and they had their own creations to share with one another.

To this day, though, we're still waiting for the evidence that eating real meat could be dangerous. But the pet ban has been lifted now; lifting the meat ban seems like the next logical step.